


While Away The Hours

by Lillian



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, F/M, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:56:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1488922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian/pseuds/Lillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she thought she saw them all around her bedside, Eren, Eld, Oluo, Gunther, The Captain. It was the fever. Sometimes they told her she had to get better soon if she wanted to go on the next mission with them. Sometimes they told her to hurry up and die because they were a team, and she shouldn't be the only one left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While Away The Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



> To my recipient: I went with your "instead of dying, Petra receives a career-ending injury" prompt. I really hope you like my fic, or at least aren't disappointed by it.

Sometimes she thought she saw them all around her bedside, Eren, Eld, Oluo, Gunther, The Captain. It was the fever. Sometimes they told her she had to get better soon if she wanted to go on the next mission with them. Sometimes they told her to hurry up and die because they were a team, and she shouldn't be the only one left behind. Sometimes it was only Eren there, begging forgiveness. Other times it was only Levi, holding her hand and watching her with inscrutable eyes. His touch was light, insubstantial, but when she squeezed his hand, he would squeeze back. Occasionally she was lucid enough to remember some of them had died. That was the worst. It made her wonder if they were _all_ dead and she was surrounded by ghosts, or worse, hallucinations. She had the persistent feeling she was forgetting something.

Her legs hurt.

Time passed. Petra floated in and out of consciousness. She woke, and she didn't know how much time had passed but her head was clearer. This time it was her father next to her. He was stroking her hair again and again, like he had after she'd fallen down from a tree when she was ten, and broken her arm.

"Oh, my poor little girl," he said, when he saw her eyes were open. "My poor, sweet little girl."

"I'm all right," Petra tried to say, but it came out garbled. Her tongue felt like it was made of rubber.

"No you're not, you're not," her father kept repeating. His hand trembled violently, but he still kept caressing her. Tears ran down his face. It must have been a trick of the light, but his hair looked grayer than the last time Petra had seen him. 

"I'll be all right, you'll see," Petra tried to reassure him. Her legs hurt worse than ever and she wanted to have a sip of water, but that could wait. "Tell mom too, not to worry. I'll be out of here and back on duty in no time."

Her father's face contorted so badly he hardly looked like himself.

"Your mother's still passed out. And the Survey Corps already sent your discharge," he said in a horrible, tremulous voice.

"Why?" asked Petra, that one word unable to encompass all her confusion.

"Because, sweetheart, your legs. Your poor, poor legs."

Oh, yes, that was it. The thing she had forgotten.

The only question was, if they were gone, why did they still hurt so badly.

* * *

Petra got released just four days afterwards. Some of the Corps came to see her in the meantime, but not Captain Levi or Eren. Something big was happening, and they were headed to the capital along with most of the soldiers who hadn't been killed during the expedition. Petra was pretty sure they hadn't managed to capture the Female Titan after all, but everyone seemed reluctant to say it outright. She guessed it was because she wasn't part of the Corps anymore, and they'd always been reluctant to talk Corps business with outsiders.

She was lucky that they'd launched the expedition out of Karanese this time, Petra thought, since it was her hometown and she wouldn't have to travel far to go home. The doctors gave her a last rushed check-up, took out her stitches and prescribed her an ointment for the scars so the skin would soften and not pull uncomfortably, and that was it. Petra's father and one of her brothers lifted her up from the wheelchair and into the cart, then tied the chair next to her. Petra got it free of charge, along with quite a lot of pain medicine and a pension only marginally lower than the paltry wages she'd received as an active soldier - people didn't go to the Survey Corps for the money, so the government sensibly didn't offer them much.

Petra's father threw a blanket over her lap even though it was warm outside, and her brother made a valiant effort at small talk during the journey, told her how everyone was doing, how much they were looking forward to seeing her. Petra's family managed a small inn off the main road outside the Karanese walled city. Like all inner fortress cities Karanese had been a prosperous trade town before Wall Maria fell. Times were harder now, but it wasn't as bad as other places. Karanese was also a university town, the second biggest inside Wall Rose, and it also bordered a marble quarry and a few clay pits that produced much sought after materials for pottery and buildings. The inn was always bustling.

That was one of the reasons Petra had entered the academy so late, at fourteen. She had no need to choose between the fields, the factories or the army for work. Her parents could afford to support her until she got married, and more than that they actually needed the extra pair of hands. She wouldn't have been a burden.

But somehow along the way, between watching her older sister die in childbirth and the masses of desperate, helpless people that were sent to reclaim Wall Maria and never returned, Petra decided to do her part to help humanity. It wasn't some big, noble decision. She didn't want or expect to be a hero. All she wanted was her death to count. Everyone died, and Petra realized she would much rather do it on the battlefield trying to save other people's children, than on a marriage bed drenched in sweat and blood after she'd brought a child of her own into this world when she couldn't ensure its safety.

Maybe that was how she'd gotten into the habit of taking care of the rest of the squad - in the academy she'd been one of the oldest, and she'd liked the role of elder sister. In her own family she was the baby, and everyone had always pampered her, as much as pampering was possible in a constantly busy family.

By the time they came home Petra was nodding off after she'd caved in and swallowed some medicine on the way. She was too out of it for the exuberant welcome home she got. Everyone came out to meet her and her mother cried and hugged her so carefully as if she were made of glass.

"I told you not to do it, didn't I tell you not to do it?!" she said again and again. "Joining the army, and not only the army but the Survey Corps! You shouldn't have done it, look what happened now! Oh, those people, I wish they wouldn't have a moment's peace after what they did to you. Commander Erwin takes no care of his soldiers, and don't get me started on _that man_ -"

Petra's father cleared his throat noisily and Petra's mother stopped talking, but she looked combative still. _What man_ , Petra thought sleepily, but there was no time for pondering because her nephews and nieces descended upon her. Some of them didn't even remember her, but they seemed very impressed with their soldier aunt all the same.

"Can I see where your legs used to be?" asked her younger brother's oldest, the spitting image of him at that age and just as bold.

"Shush, Peter! What did I tell you about badgering your aunt?" his mother scolded him.

"I don't mind," Petra said, and lifted the blanket. Some of the kids got quiet and their eyes grew round as saucers. Petra's mother and sisters-in-law looked like they might be sick. Not Peter though. He laughed and snuck closer.

"That's amazing! Did a Titan bite them off, Aunt? Was it big? Did you kill it?"

"Yes, it was a Titan. One of the biggest out there," Petra said. "But I didn't kill her."

That didn't slow Peter down.

"Did you kill many other Titans then?"

"Almost sixty," Petra answered, and felt like smiling for the first time since waking up in the hospital.

"Sixty!"

"That's enough now. Your aunt must be tired, leave her be," Peter's mother cut in. She looked a little unsettled, and Petra suddenly wondered if she was worried that devil-may-care Peter might decide to follow the steps of the aunt he was named after, and join the army.

"I'm actually a little hungry, Mom," she said, trying to change the subject.

"Of course you are! We'll eat right away, I made your favorite stew and the guests are all sorted, no one should disturb us for once."

"It's a good sign she has an appetite," Petra's father said. "The doctors said she was recovering very well."

There was a general hopeful murmur. Petra's second brother lifted her up in his arms.

"I don't know about that," he said, and winked at Petra. "She's pretty heavy already, if she eats too much I might start dropping her."

Then he pretended to do just that.

Most of the family started yelling at him as one, but Petra laughed so hard she started hiccupping.

They all moved into the kitchen and Petra ate seconds of the fresh herbed stew, held the baby, barely three months old, and listened to gossip until she was as well informed about the neighborhood's dirty linen as if she'd never left.

It was all good as long as she didn't look down at her stumps.

* * *

Life back home had a familiar routine to it and Petra tried to fall in line as much as was possible. She helped out some, kept from being underfoot, and slept a lot. She had one good cry, choked into her sleeve behind a carefully closed door so no one would hear, and after she was done she felt hollowed out and somehow clean, as if she'd unloaded garbage and not just poured out her regret and self-pity into tears.

She cleaned her room, by the clever application of a rag on a stick. It wasn't her old room, but another on the first floor because the chair was too unwieldy to haul up and down the stairs every day. Cleaning it made it seem more hers somehow.

Well-wishers and gossips came round to see her but her mother chased them away. The guests tended to stare at her, so Petra kept to the kitchen and back garden where she didn't have to deal with strangers. It wasn't bad, but a part of her kept asking " _Is this it? Is this to be my life from now on? Isn't there anything else?_ "

It was good to be with family, and Petra was lucky to have them, she realized that. But it wasn't enough to build a life on. So far it still felt like a vacation, like something impermanent. But it wasn't impermanent, it was forever, since Petra highly doubted any man would take her like this even if she were looking for a husband. And once that thought sunk in, what then? Would her life be this aimless from then on? Petra didn't know.

When she was alone she did pushups on the floor, and sit ups with her stumps wedged under the wooden bar at her bed's footboard because she couldn’t even raise herself otherwise with the changed distribution of weight on her body. She wondered what she was keeping up her strength for, kept thinking it was pointless, but kept doing it all the same.

One day her brothers came back from the market with big news. The Military Police and the Survey Corps had captured a Titan.

"No ordinary Titan, mind, but one just like that boy that blocked the gate in Trost," Petra's brother told her out on the back porch while she was shelling out peas. "It was a girl inside this time. They say the Military Police have her now."

The pot almost clattered to the floor, but Petra caught it at the last second.

So they'd captured her after all. Petra had wondered what the person inside was like, if she looked normal in her daily life, like Eren, if there was anything about her that distinguished her from ordinary humans, if she were really in the army, if Petra would have known her if she'd passed her on the street.

Now she was in the hands of the Military Police. That couldn't be fun. They'd wanted to torture Eren to death, Petra knew, and he hadn't done anything to deserve it. She wondered if they'd let Captain Levi have a go at her. She hoped they would.

What she didn't feel was satisfaction. She should have, she should have felt vindictively glad. But that was impossible. Eld, Gunther and Oluo were still dead, she was still useless, and Captain Levi was still alone, and Petra couldn't feel glad that the Titan who'd caused it all would get her own. That would fix nothing, wouldn't turn back time and have her team alive and together again. At this time they would have been squabbling over whose turn it was to supervise the new recruits while they mucked out the stables, while wolfing down a breakfast of boiled millet and listening for the thump of Captain Levi's boots down the stairs.

Petra missed it all so much she felt her insides clench together with longing, so much she could feel the taste of that millet in her mouth.

"Petra," her brother said "Petra, where'd you go off to all of a sudden?"

"Nowhere," Petra said. "I'm right here."

* * *

That night Petra thought about the past. She'd promised herself she wouldn't do it often. Her memories had become treasured possessions to be cherished, taken out only occasionally for fear of tarnishing their gilt. But tonight she felt listless and in need of consoling, and she decided she could make an exception.

On the cusp of dozing off, memories took on a particular life of their own. Scenes flickered briefly behind Petra's eyelids, little moments with the squad, Eld putting up his hair, Gunther tapping with his pencil as he pored over a map, Oluo chewing with his mouth open just to irritate her. Levi pulling a dust bunny off her hair before admonishing her to tie a cloth over her head when cleaning.

Then those memories gave away to more jagged, colorful ones, flashes of battles. The time she cut off that Titan's hand after he grabbed Eld's wire, how proud she had been to save her senior, the time her arm sunk to the elbow in a Titan's eye and the gooey, disgusting feeling of it. And always, always, Levi whirring around so fast Petra didn't dare blink lest she missed him. It had happened sometimes, Petra would close her eyes for a moment and by the time she opened them Levi would be gone, and Petra would feel a momentary surge of half-formed panic. But then she'd look around and there Levi would be, up in the shadow of a clock tower or down nearly skimming the street, and she'd feel assured.

Captain Levi always turned up in the end.

* * *

One morning she wheeled out of her room and Levi was in their kitchen. Petra wasn't surprised, exactly. In the back of her mind she'd been convinced she would see him again, just not so soon. She had to turn up her face to look at Levi now, and that was a new thing. He had always seemed somehow smaller in civilian clothes, but from Petra's new and still unfamiliar vantage point he looked tall and almost towering. She tugged nervously on the throw covering her legs.

"Hello, Petra," Levi said. He had dark smudges under his eyes. "You look better."

He glanced at the corner of the room, where Petra's sister in law had retreated, looking somewhere between uncertain and fearful. Levi likely wouldn't have been shown in if anyone else had been around - most of Petra's family seemed to blame him for her injury, no matter how many times she tried to convince them it wasn't his fault.

"Can we talk somewhere more private?" Levi asked, so Petra led the way to the back yard. There were a couple of steps to negotiate down the porch, but Petra usually had someone to keep her from tumbling face down into a row of tomatoes. She looked over her shoulder at Levi.

"Captain? Could you give me a push?"

Levi didn't react for an embarrassing second, but then approached Petra slowly, like she were a spooked horse. He took hold of the chair handles and eased it down the steps, so carefully Petra barely felt the bump. He let go as soon as they were outside.

Petra rolled the wheelchair down the smooth, packed-dirt path between the divided plots of the vegetable garden until she felt they were far enough from the house. Levi stopped as soon as she did, a few feet away.

A short silence followed, awkward on Petra's side.

"How have you been?" Levi asked at length.

"All right, considering," Petra answered, and tentatively smiled at him. Levi just looked back at her with a blank face, but that was nothing new, and even comforting now. "How have _you_ been?"

"We finally caught the scum," he said, ignoring her question. He was speaking in an even, practically emotionless tone, and blinking more rarely than he usually did, like there was something terribly important about Petra's face that he shouldn't miss.

"I heard. I hope you didn't think you owed it to me to tell me in person," Petra said, gently.

"I didn't come here because I owe you."

He crouched beside her so that their faces were almost at the same level.

"The Titan put herself in a pretty little crystal to make sure we wouldn't make her talk, so Erwin authorized another expedition to the Jaeger basement. An unofficial one," Levi said, just like that, like this wouldn't mean a court marshal for Commander Erwin and anyone who had been aware of his plan and hadn't reported him.

"Without permission from the high command?" Petra whispered, as if a spy for the Military Police might be eavesdropping from the shrubbery.

Levi made a noise that encompassed his opinion of the high command. It was a very eloquent noise, and not a very favorable opinion.

"While I appreciate you coming to see me, Captain, I don't know why you're telling me all this. This is Survey Corps business," said Petra. She felt confused, wistful and ashamed all of a sudden, and she had no idea why.

Levi raised his chin and looked at her down his nose with something very like, and yet not even remotely the same as contempt.

"You're still Survey Corps," he said, in a tone that implied it was self-evident and Petra was being weird for asking. Petra looked at her lap hurriedly, and suppressed the urge to beam at him.

"Then did you reach the basement? Did you find what's in it?" she asked quickly, hoping that Levi wouldn't notice her embarrassment.

"We found it. It was emptier than a nobleman's head. Someone cleaned it out, someone who had the strength to clear the house collapsed on top of it to reach it. It wasn't long ago; it was still dry inside."

Petra contemplated this.

"Maybe the Female Titan did it sometime before the expedition," she said, hoping it wasn't true. She knew now that reaching the basement hadn't been the only or even the primary goal of their mission, but it was still upsetting somehow to think that it had been futile from the beginning.

"Maybe. She never missed patrol duty on paper, but this is the Military Police, she could have been running around outside the wall for days and none of them would have noticed she was missing."

"The Female Titan used to be in the _Military Police_?" asked Petra. A lump lodged itself in her throat. It was one thing to know there might be some hostile shifters among them, it was another entirely to find out they'd infiltrated the Military Police. Who could say who was working for the enemy then? The chancellor might be a shifter, or the head of the Wall Cult. The King. Anything was possible. "How did she get in?"

"That doesn't matter right now." Levi sounded impatient, almost urgent. "The pigs in Cina want their lands back, so they'll let us keep Eren as long as they think we can use him to retake Wall Maria. What we need is answers, and we're out of leads. Except for this."

He took out an envelope from his inside pocket, and handed it to Petra. She took it tentatively, and turned it around in her hands. It was an old letter, the paper yellowed and raised from long since dried damp spots. The faint post office stamp dated it just days before the fall of Shiganshina. The sender, an Imre Schulek, was unfamiliar, but the addressee was one Dr Grisha Jaeger.

Petra raised her eyes to Levi in a silent question.

"This was in what was left of the kitchen, unopened. It must have arrived the day of the attack," Levi said. "Read it."

Petra pulled a single sheet of paper out, read it silently.

 

_Dear Grisha,_

_I've been thinking a lot about you and our youthful experiments lately. Can't be helped, as I have such excellent reminder of them, but then again so do you._

_Some people came round to ask me about our work just the other day. Fortunately, I was prepared for unexpected guests. I imagine some of their associates might visit you shortly as well._

_I'm taking a long vacation for the sake of my health. Perhaps you and your family should do the same._

_Sincerely Yours,  
Imre_

 

"It's a clear warning. Asking Schulek what kind of experiments Dr Jaeger was involved with is your best bet, but you already know that," Petra said.

"Imre Schulek used to be a docent in the Faculty of Medicine at Karanese Medical College, which is also the one both he and Jaeger graduated from," said Levi, eyes burning in his tired, drawn face. "He disappeared five years ago. The Military Police offered a reward for any information on his whereabouts."

The Military Police definitely didn't do that for just any missing person. Petra was starting to suspect where this was going. She folded the letter back up, stuffed it in the envelope with shaking fingers and tried to hand it back to Levi. He didn't reach out to take it.

"I need you to trace this for me," Levi said, dead serious.

Petra laughed. It was a high, bitter laugh, and completely unlike her. It scared her. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, tried to get a hold of herself.

"I couldn't do anything for anyone the way I am now," she said, to her own relief sounding more normal.

"You have to," Levi said, unmoved. "The Survey Corps can't investigate this without attracting too much attention. The only reason the Military Police doesn't know about us sniffing around is because the Dean of Medicine was more eager to hush up the whole thing than to tell them we were digging. That will change if we don't back off."

Petra didn't want to look him in the face, but he moved to kneel right before her, and caught her eye.

"This is your town, and I trust you." He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. It hurt. Petra covered his hand with her own unconsciously, wanting the pain to stop, wanting him to let go, wanting to keep him from letting go.

"You can do this," Levi said, and even if she didn't agree Petra had to obey her Captain's orders.

* * *

Petra's parents and brothers were unanimously furious over Levi's visit.

"How dare he show his face here?" Petra's father raged. "He left you to suffer alone like a dog in the hospital, and now he comes. What did he want, Petra?"

"Just to see me," Petra kept her eyes on her bowl of soup. She'd always been too nervous when she had to lie to be good at it.

"Humph."

Petra spent half that night awake, planning. In the morning, she had a good rummage in her wardrobe. She'd left all her clothes back home when she'd joined, and since they'd been sewn with the assumption that she'd grow into them most still fit her now. Petra had been wearing dresses around the house, carefully tucked in so they wouldn't snag on the wheels of her chair. This time she selected two pairs of trousers, and asked her brother to move the old sewing machine to the table in her room.

The hardest part was taking measurements. She put it off as long as she could, but finally she had to lift up her skirt and measure her inseam. She tried to do it with her eyes averted, and was coping right up until she looked at the second measurement and realized her stumps were the exact same length. Light-headed, she wondered if she had the Female Titan to thank for biting them off precisely mid-thigh, or if the doctors had helpfully leveled up the uneven ends. She closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the table until the nausea subsided.

Then she cut off her trousers' legs and sewed them shut. It was worth it - when she tried one on it fit like a glove. Petra left her room wearing it.

Claus, the boy who delivered eggs and milk to the inn and most of the neighborhood, agreed to cart Petra around for a fee, provided it happened in the afternoon when he was free.

That settled, Petra hung around in the kitchen waiting for an opportunity to pinch a knife. She waited for a rare moment she was alone, then grabbed a sharp, six-inch blade with a well-worn bone handle that fit nicely in her hand. It also fit nicely into the wheelchair's back cushion, where Petra decided to stash it. The handle stuck out, of course, but that would be hidden behind Petra's back as long as she was sitting in the chair.

Finally, she negotiated the low front steps of the inn by herself and parked the wheelchair in the front yard waiting for Claus. She drew even more curious looks with her legs uncovered by a blanket, but she tried not to let it bother her. It was easier now that she had an aim.

* * *

Once an exclusive institution, Karanese University retained much of its former character even though the students of real stock had abandoned it for less illustrious establishments farther from the wall. The buildings were well-maintained, the streets clean, the people neat. Claus's battered work cart drew dirty looks, and Petra could only hope they wouldn't be stopped by a warden and asked to leave the premises.

Despite all this, Petra was glad to be out of the house. She'd opted to sit next to Claus on the bench and not roll around like a sack of potatoes out back, and with the warm breeze hitting her face she felt her mood lift. Petra was a sunny person by nature, but the last few weeks had taken their toll even on her perpetual optimism. Now, she felt almost back to her usual self.

Claus brazenly stopped the cart right in front of the University Library, and unloaded Petra's wheelchair on the sidewalk with a clatter.

"Do you want me to come in with you?" he asked. "I would, only someone has to watch the cart. Bess wanders off if you leave her alone."

"That's fine. Just help me up the front steps, please." Petra had come a lot here with her father as a child, and she remembered the librarians pushing trolleys of books up and down low ramps. At the time Petra had loved sliding down their gleaming polished surfaces; now she would have to use them to move around.

Claus nodded and lifted the wheelchair up the steps, then came back to carry Petra to it.

"Easier this way," he said, and then held open one wing of the heavy wooden door so Petra could wheel herself in. The door closed behind her with a screech, and Petra took a curious look around.

The main body of the library was the same cavernous, nearly deserted hall from her memories. Readers weren’t encouraged to dawdle here, browsing around the shelves and dirtying the leather bindings with their greasy fingers. Instead they were supposed to rely on one of the librarians to find the book they were looking for.

Petra did just that, making a beeline for the registration desk, where a librarian was stamping off new books with her back turned.

"Excuse me," Petra said once she reached the desk. It was raised on a platform, and that along with the familiar from long ago surroundings made her feel like she'd turned back into a child.

The librarian turned, didn't see any patron where there should have been one, and scowled.

"Down here," said Petra.

The librarian leaned over the counter to look at Petra, and her eyes zeroed in immediately on her missing legs.

"I'm looking for any publications by Dr Imre Schulek," Petra said, with a determinedly polite smile.

The woman's eyes snapped up to Petra's face, and she hurried off to check with shamefaced speed. She didn't ask Petra for her card, which was just as well since Petra didn't have one. A couple of minutes later the librarian returned with a sturdy catalogue square.

"We have several monographs by him. Which one do you need?" she asked Petra.

"Could I see this?" Petra asked, and after a moment's hesitation the woman reached down and gave her the piece of cardboard.

Petra scanned it quickly for leads. There was a paper on yellow liver disease, on kidney stones, several on treating burns. None of them were published with any co-authors.

"I was hoping to find some of his more obscure research," Petra said vaguely.

"Oh, if he did any research with University funding he would have been required to keep notes on it. Even if it was unsuccessful, the notes should still be in the archives. Would you like me to put a request for you?" asked the librarian.

"No, you don't have to go through the trouble," Petra said hastily, trying to appear casual. "I'll check the archives myself. Could you tell me where the building is?"

"The archives aren't open to the public. You'll have to make a request through us," the librarian insisted. She gave Petra a probing look. "What did you say you needed this research for?"

"It's for a friend," Petra said, and backed away. "But I can see he'll have to look for himself. Goodbye."

Her heart beat like a drum in her chest right up to the door, which was ridiculous. Strictly speaking, she hadn't even done anything dangerous yet. Yet. That could very easily change, and she was suddenly aware she couldn't afford to make any missteps here. People had disappeared because of the secrets she was looking for, secrets that had to do with why a human boy could turn into a Titan, something unimaginable before it happened.

It wasn't the same as going into battle, but it gave her a similar feel, tense, alert, eager to do it right. In this, like in battle, Captain Levi was relying on her to the job she had to, and Petra would rather die than disappoint him.

* * *

They found the archives easily enough, off the main streets, in a north-facing building with a dank garden. The wrought-iron gate was closed but unlocked, and there was gaslight filtering from behind the tall, deep set windows even though it was light enough outside.

Gravel crunched beneath the chair's wheels while Claus and Petra moved down the path. Claus gave Petra a boost up the steps without being asked, and then reached for the knocker. Petra beat him to it, stretching up and giving the door a smart rap. Claus took the hint and headed back to the cart, and Petra was left trying to come up with something persuasive enough to get her inside. She was all out of ideas.

The door screeched open, startling her. A peeved-looking old man stood on the other side. From behind him she could see an even more ancient man in overalls unhurriedly mopping up the floor. Other than that, the place appeared silent as a tomb and just as deserted.

"Yes?" the man said impatiently.

Petra took in a shaky breath and went for it.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I was told at the library that you could help me. You see, I'm looking for any research by-"

"Are you a member of the faculty of any of His Majesty's exalted universities?" the man interrupted.

"No."

"A research assistant bearing the proper documentation?"

"No, but-"

"Then you're wasting both my time and yours," the man said, his tone implying _his time_ was infinitely more precious than Petra's. He pulled the door closed with finality.

Well.

Petra dithered on the steps, wondering if she should try going through the library after all. That probably wouldn't work either. She wasn't even a student, and such a request probably had to be approved by a university administrator. With the Survey Corps asking around about Schulek it wasn't a good idea to leave any kind of paper trail. If she still had her gear, if she could still _use_ her gear, she could try breaking in. Levi could do it, she was sure. Maybe this wouldn't count as too much involvement. Maybe next time she saw him, she could tell him what she found and leave the rest to him.

Except she didn't want to at all. This was too little, she wanted to give him something more substantial, she wanted to follow this through and not give up after one trip to the library.

The door behind her opened once more, and a different, lower voice called out.

"Hey, miss, you still here?"

It was the old man in the overalls.

"Yes," Petra said, and moved closer.

The man flashed a gap toothed grin her way.

"If you come back after five, I could let you in. It'll only cost you a drink," he said.

"Deal," Petra said quickly, in case he decided to change his mind, and the door closed one final time.

* * *

It was just after three, so Petra bought Claus and herself each a scoop of roast chestnuts and they parked the cart in a remote alleyway to wait. It was just as well her parents had saved up the money she'd sent home, because all this sneaking around was turning out to be rather expensive. After the chestnuts disappeared, they killed time by playing cat's cradle with a piece of old string, and Claus told Petra all about his girl and his brother's new gelding, while next to them Bess the Mare periodically rained droppings on the nice shiny street.

Weirdly, that was the only thing Petra felt guilty about, even though she'd recently contemplated burglary, and was now about to bribe her way into a restricted archive. She figured you couldn't serve under Captain Levi for two years and not have him rub off on you. Then she realized she'd just been thinking about Levi rubbing off on her and went scarlet.

No more than quarter of an hour after the clock tower bell struck five, Petra had already slunk back in front of the archive building. She'd debated whether she should wait longer, just to be sure the coast was clear, but she didn't want her new acquaintance to get tired of waiting and go home. She shouldn't have worried. The door opened as soon as she knocked, and the man from before stepped aside to let her in.

"Don't worry, management's long gone," he said. "Loves his dinner so much, that one, he's out the door before the bell's finished ringing. I'm Habel, by the way. Formerly Private Habel of the Garrison."

He bent over and rapped his calf with a knuckle. There was a tinny echo.

"I was inspecting the Wall, the old Wall, Maria. I was doing the outside, and one of my wires just snapped. I dropped down, and one of them took a chunk out of me. You?"

Petra hesitated. This was probably the real reason the man had let her in, because she used to be a soldier, because she was in pieces like him. Petra's story was the real payment here. If she told it, it would be a connection between them, it would make him less willing to sell her out if someone came asking.

"I was playing bait for a Titan. It moved when I didn't expect it to," she explained.

"Don't they always," said Habel, and lead the way through the silent corridors. Evidently they used trolleys here too, so Petra had no problem following. Habel took out a chain of keys and unlocked a padlocked grid barring the passage. Rows of cabinets lined the walls on the other side.

"There it is," Habel said, and stepped aside to let Petra enter. He didn't follow.

Every cabinet was marked with a plaque, so it was easy enough to find the one bearing the letters "sch" and start digging. Within moments, Petra held a slim folder with her target's name printed on the cover. She opened it so hastily the sheets of paper inside almost spilled out.

Imre Schulek hadn't left any notes. He had, however, taken part in group research that the University had approved and paid for seventeen years ago. Apparently the whole thing had been abandoned after a year and a half - with no positive results. The folder contained some bare information - the budget, the time frame, the team. There were six names listed, one of them Grisha Jaeger's. Petra skimmed down to "aim" impatiently, and her breath hitched for a moment.

They were trying to improve the process of vaccination.

Everyone on Team Levi had known about Eren's last garbled memory of his father - the meeting in the woods, the syringe, the cryptic conversation. They'd all thought Commander Pixis was bullshitting when he'd called Eren a product of a military experiment, but maybe that was actually the truth. Vaccine improvement sounded like a good front for something like this. The research must have been unsuccessful at the time, but maybe Dr Jaeger had perfected it, and in his desperation decided to test it on his son. 

Then it occurred to her that since she was here, she absolutely had to check what was filed under Grisha Jaeger's name.

It turned out to be the exact same documentation that had been in Schulek's, no more, no less. Petra kept going through the people who'd participated in that vaccine research. The closest name to Jaeger on the list was Miklos Koller.

Petra dug out Koller's file, and at first thought it was more of the same. There was the already familiar report, but then Petra noticed something odd - Koller was an engineer. She'd almost missed it, Jaeger and Schulek were doctors, and what with the subject of their research being vaccination, she'd assumed everyone working on it would be doctors as well. Not Koller.

She rushed through the other names on the list. Andrea Mieg - a chemist. Frantishek Wilde - a historian. Diana Larionova - another engineer. Leonid Kreuz - a geographer.

She could see how a chemist might have been useful, maybe, but engineers, a _historian and a geographer_... There was definitely something here.

She stuffed one of the identical reports under her jacket and headed towards the grid. When he heard the squeak of the wheels, Habel put out his cigarette with leathery fingers.

"Did I earn that drink then?" he asked, stuffing the stub behind his ear.

Petra grinned. 

"You earned the whole bottle."

* * *

By the time Claus dropped Petra off it was already dark outside, and she was hungry, sore, and urgently needing to take a piss. Say what you will about the Survey Corps, but it taught you to hold it in like nothing else.

But then her father came out of the porch, and Petra forgot all her discomforts.

"You missed dinner," he said. He helped her down from the cart, and didn't say anything else before Claus had taken off. Then he turned to her, stern, like Petra had rarely seen him.

"I was at the library," she blurted out.

"Must have been a really good book," her father said, then sighed and ran a hand down his face. His shoulders slumped, and Petra felt guilt gnawing at her insides. "I'm not stupid. Your mother's not stupid. That man comes and two days later you're out until dark when we couldn't make you show your face out of the house before."

"I'm sorry," whispered Petra. The words had been on the tip of her tongue ever since she'd seen her father cry by her hospital bed, and now they finally burst out. "I'm sorry I got myself hurt, that I made you worry. Forgive me."

"Oh, Petra, it's not your fault," her father hugged her, and Petra buried her face in his warm shirt. "That man will get you hurt again. No, listen to me, I'm not saying he's not a good man. But he's so concerned with fighting for humanity he could never fight for you. He might be sorry if anything happened to you, but what would that be to me, to your mother, your brothers? What do I care if the great Captain Levi feels bad that he got my daughter killed because it was necessary for humanity's sake? That won't give me my child back."

Petra wished with her whole heart she could promise him she wouldn't cause him any grief, that the worst was over and she would make sure she was safe now, but she couldn't, because her father was right. She could only hold onto his back and hope that she was good enough, lucky enough to come out of this unscathed this time.

* * *

Petra's oldest childhood friend now worked at the town hall, and there was something about having eaten bugs and held phlegm-spitting contests with a person that freed you of the embarrassment of asking for a favor. It was called "town hall", but up until five years ago the building had housed only a handful of soldiers and scribes tasked with monitoring the goods passing through the wall. Since the mayor hadn't been able to bear the idea that there was now a single wall between him and the Titans, the whole administration had been moved here. Unsurprisingly, the building was cramped, noisy, and full of arguing people most of the time. It was also easy to sneak in without anyone wondering whether you had any business being there.

Petra's brother dropped her off on his way to the market and took off, after depositing Petra in a comfortable leather chair that barely fit in Bea's broom-cupboard-sized office.

"I'm sorry to drop in on you at work," Petra said once the door closed. Bea had written her a warm note after she'd been discharged, but she just hadn't felt up to socializing, even with old friends. Especially with old friends, who would probably feel the difference in Petra even more keenly.

"It's fine," Bea said, waving a hand dismissively and giving Petra a familiar mischievous smile. "I don't smoke, so it's only fair I should be allowed friend breaks instead. Is that a cookie tin I see there?"

The cookies cracked any remaining ice, and Petra found herself having fun as they chatted and caught up, avoiding the elephant in the room. She couldn't relax completely though, not just because she'd come here with an agenda. Bea was only being kind when she skirted around the subjects of Petra's injury and what she'd lived through in the Survey Corps.

And yet it meant that they couldn't talk about a huge part of Petra's life, a part that had defined her and that she was more proud of than anything else she'd ever accomplished. If they did, it would be uncomfortable for both of them, and Bea might feel pity, or the helpless horror that came with being confronted with the reality of the Titans' existence instead of the abstract knowledge they were somewhere far away. Petra didn't want either. It wasn't a real friendship if you couldn't share so much of yourself though. It made Petra feel a little sad, all the more so because it was inevitable.

Eventually Bea dusted the cookie crumbs off her fingers and put on a mock-serious expression.

"So, what do you need?" she asked. "Don't be shy, you know I'm not going to refuse."

Petra capitulated immediately.

"I'd like you to check a few names for me," she said. "You're amazing and a lifesaver, by the way."

"Of course I am. Let's see those names then."

Bea disappeared with Petra's short list of names for a few minutes. Petra was left alone in her office to fidget and keep her fingers crossed for a breakthrough.

"There's nothing on record for most of them," Bea said when she returned. "None of them were born, married or died in this district. The only thing I found was a missing person report."

"From five years ago?" Petra asked, disappointed. It was probably the university reporting Schulek's disappearance.

"No, sixteen. A woman reported that Andrea Mieg had disappeared, and none of her belongings were missing. She was very persistent - made several written enquiries about the investigation, and lodged one complaint to the mayor. Seems she thought the case wasn't given enough attention."

"What was the name of the woman?" Petra asked, barely holding her excitement in check.

"Varvara Koch. There's an address here too. You want it?"

Petra wanted it.

* * *

Petra didn't ask her brother to give her a ride to Mrs. Koch's house - he would do it, but he'd ask uncomfortable questions, so the paper with the address stayed burning a hole in her pocket. She'd have to resort to Claus's luxury transport service again, and that couldn't be arranged until the next morning.

Petra took out the note with the address surreptitiously, while her brother complained endlessly about the road blockage caused by some Wall Cult bigwig's arrival. She'd rarely been to that part of town; it was inside Wall Rose like her family's inn, but so remote it was closer to a farming village than a town neighborhood. Petra's mother had brought her there once or twice to buy pears for preserving, and her memories of the place were cheerful, bathed in golden autumn sunlight and delicious like fruit juice dripping between her fingers.

The next morning Petra cornered Claus while he was unloading straw-lined buckets of eggs on the grass in front of the inn, and managed to recruit him for another expedition.

She knew she should feel lucky to have found transport on such short notice, and even more so because Claus wasn't a gossip and didn't care much about Petra's business as long as he got paid, but she was getting tired of being lugged around everywhere. If she still had legs she could take a horse by herself and go wherever she pleased without having to depend on anyone. She could have gone to see Mrs. Koch the same day she got her address; she could have had some answers already.

Instead, she could only sprawl moodily in the back of the cart with a packet of sandwiches her sister-in-law had prepared balanced on her stomach, like a kid on a day trip. She watched the puffy white clouds floating above in the sky, so deep it almost made her dizzy, too empty. She squinted until all she could see was sunlight bleeding through her eyelashes. What that sky needed was black wires and people swinging from them. Rows and rows of tiny figures, suspended like marionettes, dancing. Petra didn't notice when she started dancing with them, just another figure with her place in the neat order, limbs jerking obediently to some unknown rhythm. The one right in front turned around towards Petra, its head moving as if on hinges, its mouth stretched like a shining crescent moon on its grey face. It said:

"Wake up, Petra. We're here."

Petra rolled onto her side to the sight of Claus's round face and the neat, white-washed house behind him.

"You awake now?" he asked.

"Yeah, just give me a minute," Petra said, stifling a yawn against her sleeve. She felt dizzy and out of it, right when she had to be on her best game for the conversation she was about to have. It had been stupid to fall asleep.

She lifted her head just in time to see a woman in work clothes rounding the house. The woman slowed down when she saw she had visitors, and headed decisively towards them through the garden.

"Help me down, quick," Petra said anxiously, but Claus had only just managed to take down the wheelchair by the time the woman reached the gate. She stopped on the other side of the chest-high wooden fence, but made no move to open it.

"Can I help you?" she asked, in a precise, even voice. 

"Are you Varvara Koch?" Petra asked, and the woman nodded. "I'd like to talk to you about an old friend of yours, Andrea Mieg."

The change was dramatic. If the woman had been coolly polite before, now she turned absolutely frosty.

"I don't know anyone by that name. Please leave."

She turned to do just that herself, and Petra's muscles twitched with the impulse to leap forward and stop her.

"Wait! I know you cared about her! You looked for her, didn't you?" she cried out.

Varvara Koch stopped. Her gaze bore into Petra, moved briefly to Claus before shifting to the closest house down the road. Her eyes were hard with calculation. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.

"It was a long time ago. She was a friend of mine, as you say. She disappeared. I don't like to be reminded of it. I won't talk to you about her."

Petra took in a breath to argue, and Mrs. Koch raised a palm.

"I won't talk to you about her, but you can come in and have a cup of tea, if you like," she continued, and while Petra wasn't very experienced in intrigue, she could take a hint.

"Yes, of course, thank you," Petra blurted out, then almost fell off the cart and elbowed Claus in the ribs in her haste to move to the damn wheelchair already.

Varvara Koch rolled her eyes at her from behind Claus's back.

"I'll take it from here," she told him, and took hold of the chair's handles. "Boy, you can fetch that horse water from the well, and drink some yourself while you're at it. But don't touch my fruit if you know what's good for you."

She pushed Petra down the path, round the house and into the kitchen at the back, where she pushed aside a bench to fit Petra's chair beside the table. Then she closed the door firmly, and grabbed a kettle from the iron stove in the corner.

"So," she said while pouring the tea. "What about Andrea?"

"I think I might be able to find out what happened to her. I have some suspicions already. But I need to ask you some questions about her work, to be sure," Petra said, hoping this would be convincing enough.

Mrs. Koch threw her a sly smirk.

"If you knew anything about Andrea's disappearance, you wouldn't be here. Why don't you tell me what you suspect and why you're asking, and I'll decide whether I have something to say to you."

Petra thought over her options. She had no reason to trust Mrs. Koch. She might have cared about Andrea Mieg, or she might have had another reason to look for her. She might be trying to hinder Petra's investigation, and telling her too much would only make it easier for her to confuse Petra. On the other hand, Petra had no other leads. She had to wrap this up quickly, or she'd start attracting as much unwanted attention as the Survey Corps would have if they'd kept at it in the first place. A legless ginger woman clattering around town in a giant milk cart wasn't exactly inconspicuous after all, especially when she was asking pointed questions. Petra had to choose her words very carefully.

"I know your friend was involved in vaccine research when she disappeared. The group that conducted this research was strangely varied - there were two engineers, a historian and a geographer among them. I'm actually trying to find out what happened to another member who disappeared five years ago. But you have my word that if I find out what happened to Andrea I'll return here and tell you."

Mrs. Koch smiled humorlessly. She could be any age between thirty-five and fifty, but at that moment she looked old and tired.

"Or you'll end up in a dungeon dropping my name and the name of whoever put you up to this like hot potatoes."

"I wouldn't do that," Petra said quietly. She had no illusions she wouldn't crack under torture eventually, but if it came to that she had no plans to let herself be taken alive. "And some things are worth the risk. You obviously suspect your friend was working for the military. I believe she was trying to do her bit for the survival of humanity, and so am I."

The cynical smile didn't leave Mrs. Koch's face, but her eyes slowly took on a faraway look.

"She used to talk about saving humanity all the time too. She wasn't really my friend, you know. We planned to grow old in this house together. Instead I'm growing old by myself, and humanity's as well as it ever was without Andrea."

"I'm sorry," Petra said. There was nothing else she could say, really. She'd made her bid, Mrs. Koch would help her or she would not, and that was that.

"I really thought it was vaccine research in the beginning," she said suddenly. "It wasn't such a transparent front as it seems to you. In those days, it was hard to get funding for any kind of research. The Military Police would have to approve it, and they were never in favor of innovation. Vaccines were one of the few exceptions. Even the Military Police could realize how important it is to avoid epidemics inside the walls, how easily we could be wiped out. Andrea said they were trying to come up with a machine that could store and administer vaccines at the same time, so that they could be easily available in remote locations without the need of a doctor."

The edge of the table dug into Petra's chest where she had leaned forward, and she could feel her own heartbeat pulsing in the fingers gripping the tea mug so hard it felt like they might leave an impression in the clay.

"But it wasn't vaccine research," she whispered.

"No. It was the historian's idea. Welde, no, Wilde. We all knew historians were a joke, either cowed by the Military Police into publishing complete fabrications, or otherwise on their payroll. It was common to add a historian to any research team, no matter how useless, as a spy. I guess Wilde was expected to spy too, but he had other plans. He'd found something in some old book or other, some references that fired him up. He was a clever devil. He approached people he judged would be interested, and he was very persuasive. They weren’t working for the Military at all."

"What were they trying to do then?" asked Petra. Had the historian found out that it was possible to turn humans into Titans by means of some formula? And if so, what about all the normal Titans. Maybe they were a product of a failed experiment, or some kind of disease, or weapons of war. She didn't want to believe they might have been humans once. Titans were monsters, mindless monsters that had to be exterminated. Yet the more she found out the more likely this possibility seemed.

"Andrea wouldn't tell me, but she was very excited. Right up until they all went on a trip, supposedly to test their vaccination machine. She said she'd be away for two weeks, but she was gone a month. She came back so different. As if she were another person entirely. She even looked older. She, the male engineer, and one of the doctors were the only ones who came back. They said they'd run into bandits, that they'd lost the others in the woods and the machine was gone. But no one believed them," Mrs. Koch said. Once she'd started to speak it was like a dam had broken in her and she wouldn't stop until the whole story was out. She couldn't have spoken about this to anyone before, she likely had thought she never would. It must have eaten away at her.

"The Doctor, he had these horrible scars on his arms. Not even scars, but these lumpy, raised deformations. The University and the Military Police probably thought they'd tried to experiment on themselves and it had gone wrong, that the others were dead somewhere, and that the doctor had got off lightly. I thought the same.

Then, one morning, I woke up to find a note from Andrea. She said she'd snuck out in the night to search Wilde's house for something, and that she expected to be back by morning with me none the wiser. She said that if I was reading this note then she was probably in great trouble, and I should go dig up the box she'd buried in our field and do my best to publicize its contents. I never saw her again."

"Did you dig out the box?"

Mrs. Koch looked at Petra with hollow eyes.

"No. I wanted to live. Even without her, I wanted to live. I didn't want to know what was in that box. Two Military Police officers came round a month later. They hinted I should take some time off to recuperate from the loss I'd suffered. The next day Wilde's house burned to the ground. So I quit my job at the university and stopped trying to get anyone to give a damn about Andrea's disappearance, and they didn't return."

Petra reached over. She didn't take Mrs. Koch's hand, but she left her own close by, palm up.

"I can't promise I won't get you in trouble," she said, looking straight into the other woman's eyes and trying to be as sincere as possible. "But it's extremely important that I get that box. I'm not sure if it'll help, me, you or humanity, but we have to know. Don't you want to know, Mrs. Koch? I'm tired of living in a world where horrible things happen and I don't know why. It might not get any better, but at least we'll know, and if that's the only kind of power we have it's still better than nothing." 

Mrs. Koch smiled that ancient smile again, but this time she seemed genuinely amused.

"You look like something chewed you up and spit half of you out for later. How can you be so hopeful?"

Petra shrugged.

"I still have something to fight for. Will you let me have that box now?"

Mrs. Koch rose suddenly.

"Not now. I'll go dig it up tonight. Come back tomorrow, and you can have it. Around this time would be best. At this hour most of my neighbors would be too busy with their afternoon naps to spy on us."

She wheeled Petra out just as quickly and efficiently as she'd brought her in, and soon Claus had turned the cart around and they were headed home. Petra curled in the back, thinking.

She wasn't sure what she should do. This was big, more than she'd expected to discover, and she wasn't sure such important information should be entrusted to her alone. No matter how much she didn't want to admit it, she probably wouldn't be able to protect it if anything went wrong. On the other hand, if Petra showed up here tomorrow with anyone else Mrs. Koch might decide she couldn't trust her and destroy the contents of the box. Not to mention that sending a note or going in person to the Survey Corps barracks would definitely attract dangerous attention. Petra couldn't afford someone deciding she would be worth tailing, not now. In the end it would be safest to pick Andrea Mieg's notes and bring them directly to the barracks.

After the first turn in the road, Claus turned back.

"Apple?" he asked, his own cheeks already bulging with fruit.

"Did you steal that? She told you not to touch her garden," Petra said, but bit into the apple Claus threw at her.

"It's not like she can do anything about it," Claus said defensively.

"We're coming back tomorrow, you know."

"Really? Petraaa! If the old lady comes after me with a pitchfork I'm asking for hazard pay," Claus grumbled.

"No way. It would be your own fault for stealing," Petra laughed between mouthfuls of apple. It crunched pleasantly between her teeth.

She wondered what Levi's face would look like, what he would say, when she brought him her loot tomorrow.

* * *

The day dissolved into a muggy evening, and by the time Petra was safely tucked into her room the first fat raindrops were starting to fall. Soon they were drumming on the tin overhang above Petra's window.

Petra pulled herself up on the window seat and watched the rain while her mother and the kids raced to bring in the laundry before it got soaked. She hoped it would be one of those brief, strong deluges that were over in a quarter hour, but even though the rain slowed down, it was still persistently drizzling by the time Petra went to bed.

"Maybe you should stay home today. I bet we could make Mom make plum dumplings," Petra's second brother said the next day. They were sitting together on the covered front porch. It was still raining, and Claus was late.

"It's damned cold, and you'll be soaked in no time," he continued.

"I have a cloak," Petra muttered absently. Her missing legs felt jittery today, to the point every few minutes her muscles tensed in preparation to get out of the chair and pace. If Claus didn't turn up soon, she swore she would ride to Mrs. Koch's house even if she had to steal the fireplace poker to steer with instead of spurs.

"And I have rubber overalls but that doesn't mean I would jump into the cesspit if I didn't have to."

Thankfully, at that moment Claus turned up down the road and Petra was spared any further attempts to lure her inside.

"Listen," she said urgently. "I might not make it back tonight. Tell Mom and Dad, but only if I don't come back for dinner."

"What? Where are you spending the night then?"

"In the Survey Corps barracks. But only as a last resort!" Petra said, wincing apologetically. Her brother groaned.

"What are you doing, kid sister?" he asked, and even if his tone was light Petra could tell he was concerned about her.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

Her brother stared at her for a while, then darted forward to kiss her on the forehead.

"Just take care of yourself and don't lose any of the parts you have left. They aren't going to grow back, you know."

* * *

Petra sat in front with Claus once more. Her brother had thrown a horse-cloth over the both of them before they set off, and it constantly flopped over their eyes or threatened to blow away. Petra tucked the end under her arm and twisted around to watch the inn as long as she could. Her brother hadn't gone back in yet. Petra thought about waving at him, but it would have felt too ominous, too much like goodbye.

One of the front wheels fell into a hole in the road and Petra jerked to the side, barely managing to keep herself from tumbling down. Reluctantly, she turned forward after that, and tried not to get distracted. She turned back one last time, but the inn was already lost in the distance.

It took them more time to get to the house this time. A wheel jammed twice, and Petra kept worrying that they'd be stuck in the mud or something else would go wrong and she would be responsible for losing humanity's best chance of understanding the Titans.

But nothing horrible happened, and in the end they reached the stretch of the road that lead directly to Mrs. Koch's home. The houses were much more widely spaced here, separated by large gardens, with long strips of field stretching behind each one. With a bit of luck, Mrs. Koch's immediate neighbors wouldn't notice them, and anyone else that happened to glimpse them wouldn't know which house they were visiting.

Mrs. Koch didn't come out when they stopped in front of the house, and Petra wondered if she hadn't just taken off. There was no sense in taking down the wheelchair if there was no one in, so Petra asked Claus to jump the fence and check the house. He wasn't even halfway up the path when the front door opened and Mrs. Koch came out in her slippers and house clothes.

"This damned rain," she said instead of a greeting while she unlatched the gate. "I didn't hear you coming at all."

Petra was dying to ask if Mrs. Koch had found Andrea's message, but she couldn't in front of Claus. She had to wait while he made mercifully short work of getting her into her chair, eager to get out of the rain. Mrs. Koch grabbed the handles as soon as he was done.

"You stay here," she said sharply when Claus moved to follow them towards the house. "Yell if you see anyone coming down the road."

"Sorry, Claus," Petra said over her shoulder. "I'll make it up to you."

Mrs. Koch's garden path was bricked over, which was a mercy since at the speed she was going Petra might have jerked out of her seat otherwise. Petra didn't exactly mind, she wanted answers as soon as possible. This time they went in through the front door, where Mrs. Koch pushed Petra's chair into a narrow hallway containing an even narrower staircase leading to the second floor.

"Do you have it?" asked Petra as soon as the door closed, muffling the sound of the rain outside.

"I have it," Mrs. Koch said. "Wait here, I'll bring it down now."

Before Petra could ask if she read the notes, Mrs. Koch ran up the stairs. Her slippers left muddy tracks on the clean carpeting, but she didn't seem to notice.

Alone, Petra couldn't hear anything beyond the wet pattering of raindrops from outside. She thought she heard another noise, a dull thud like something heavy but soft falling to the ground. She was just debating opening the door to check out the garden, when Mrs. Koch showed up on top of the stairs with a metal box in her hands. It was no bigger than a shoebox and peeling with rust, and Petra had no trouble believing it had spent fifteen years in the ground.

Mrs. Koch carried it down and practically dropped it on Petra's lap, like it was distasteful to touch. It was light, and felt fragile when Petra's curled her fingers around it. The padlock that held it closed looked just as rusty as the rest.

"I haven't opened it," Mrs. Koch said. "Take the blasted thing if you want, I don't care what you do with it. I'm going away first thing tomorrow and I don't plan on coming back."

"All right," Petra said. "If you're sure."

She wrapped the box with the end of her cloak, and put her hood back up. There was nothing more to do here. Petra's mind was already on getting to town, the Survey Corps barracks and Levi. Mrs. Koch reached to open the front door.

Someone knocked on it.

Petra froze, and so did Mrs. Koch's hand. The knock sounded again. It was a smart, businesslike rap that still managed to sound sinister to Petra's ears. It wasn't Claus, Claus would have called out, and anyway he was supposed to tell them if he saw anyone coming up the road. Petra hadn't heard any footsteps approaching, and no matter the rain she should have heard something once whoever was outside came near the front door.

Unless they didn't want to be heard.

Mrs. Koch's hand came back to life, but instead of the handle, it reached slowly towards the bolt and pulled it closed. Petra touched her elbow, and then pointed towards the back. Mrs. Koch nodded, hurried down the corridor and disappeared into a door Petra assumed lead to the kitchen where they'd first talked.

Petra could feel the muscles around her eyes straining with tension, her breath growing quick and shallow and sounding thunderous to her own ears. There was a bang from the kitchen, like from a door opened violently enough to bounce off the wall. Then another quieter sound, a chair scraping against the floor, then nothing for a whole endless second, before there was another thud, the familiar sound of a body hitting the ground.

It had all happened so quietly. That struck Petra most of all, the quiet, and how efficient it was. Whoever the person in the kitchen was, they'd done this before, and they were good at it. Too bad for them Petra wouldn't be going down without a fight.

The fear didn't die away, but Petra rose above it, as if it were a lake and she was floating on the surface. She'd done the same every time she fought Titans and this was nothing compared to that.

Petra reached back and took the umbrella propped against the door with her left hand. Just when the kitchen door screeched open and a man stuck his head out in the hallway. He saw Petra, evidently decided she wasn't a big threat, and unhurriedly came out of the kitchen. He was carrying a knife in his right hand. The knife wasn't even bloody, and that meant he'd stopped and wiped it clean so that the blood wouldn't drip towards the handle and make his grip uncertain.

"There's another one here," he called out, and then lunged at Petra.

It was too slow, experimental, and Petra managed to deflect his wrist with the end of the umbrella. The man smiled, just slightly, and the fingers of his other hand closed over the tip of it. It was easy to guess what he intended to do. He was about to yank on the umbrella, make Petra fall on the floor on her stomach, and plunge the knife in her back before she could wonder what had happened. Except once she felt the tug on her hand Petra let go, and the man stumbled backwards, almost losing his footing. Petra gave the wheels a single hard roll to follow him, and then drew out her own hidden knife.

To his credit the man saw her coming, and even managed to react. He kicked the chair into the wall so hard it rattled and folded into itself, while Petra sprung out of it onto the carpet. She rolled immediately, and saw that the force of the kick had sent the man into the side of the stairs, still unsteady on his feet. Petra would only have one chance. She was too low to reach his throat or his heart, and his fat belly made it hard to go for the classic disemboweling cut from groin to sternum. She lunged for the only viable target she had left. She made the cut, and then scrambled back on her elbows.

Above her, the man was cursing and trying to stop the blood turning his trouser leg crimson. Petra knew it was useless, she'd cut through the femoral artery, and the blood pressure there was so strong that the man would bleed out in seconds. She reached the threshold to the kitchen and sat there, knife at the ready, until the man's body finally dropped down to the ground the same way Mrs. Koch's had done less than a minute before.

It was the first time Petra had killed another human.

But it was not done. "There's another one here", that's what the man had said, and anyway he couldn't have gone round the house if he was the one knocking on the front door. It was still locked, and the windows were shuttered because of the rain, Petra remembered. Whoever was still outside would have to enter through the kitchen door as well.

Petra slid into the kitchen on her front, dragging herself forward with her hands, not letting go of the knife. The back door stood wide open, propped by Mrs. Koch's body. When she'd fallen, she'd grabbed on the tablecloth, so that it hung almost to the ground. Petra slid under the table, and waited.

The footsteps, when they came, were slow and cautious. The second man stopped at the kitchen door to give Mrs. Koch's body an experimental kick, before climbing over her and entering the kitchen. If he'd tugged off the tablecloth he would have seen Petra, but he didn't. Perhaps because hiding under the table wouldn't have given someone who could walk much advantage. It limited visibility and maneuverability, and made you a nice easy target if you were discovered.

The man skirted around the table, and Petra seized his ankle with both hands and pulled. The man fell with a grunt on top of Mrs. Koch's body, and Petra clutched her knife and slithered from under the table. The man must have hit his head on the doorframe, because he raised his own knife far too slowly to do any real damage. Petra elbowed his knife hand out of the way, and practically fell on top of him, unable to balance herself on the one arm she still held the knife in. She could feel his fetid breath on her face, him squirming under her. He hadn't let go of the knife and Petra grappled clumsily to keep him from turning it on her while trying to fold her own knife arm upwards. The floor was slick with blood, and they both kept slipping on it. Petra's hair fell in her eyes like a matted curtain and all she could see was the man's naked throat below. She plunged the knife into it, piercing his throat, grinding the knife in to get it deeper.

The man gurgled wetly, and Petra let go off the knife and clambered over him, over Mrs. Koch, until she flew over the steps and flopped on her belly in the yard.

Outside, the rain was still falling and the air smelled clean, and Petra almost sobbed into the mud in relief. Gradually her breathing slowed down and the light-headedness disappeared, and Petra remembered the box, and that it was still in the hallway with her wheelchair, and that there were three dead bodies between her and it.

She didn't want to go back there, but she had to. She let her cheek fall onto the ground, felt her hair fluttering in the dirty rainwater like an underwater plant. The cold wetness and smell of tiled earth stirred a memory.

* * *

Petra met Captain Levi during orientation, when he glared at her and the rest of the new recruits from behind Commander Erwin's shoulder. From behind Commander Erwin's elbow, really, but Petra barely noticed his height. She was too shell-shocked to realize that the shining hero she and all her fellow cadets had worshipped looked like one of those little bantam roosters that usually beat the bigger birds in the cockfights due to sheer bad temper.

But then she decided she wasn't really disappointed. It hadn't made her look up to him any less, it had only made her more curious about him.

By the time she'd come back alive from her second expedition Captain Levi hadn't said more than a dozen words to her, none of which had been to her alone.

One slow day before expedition three, another soldier kicked Petra into a pile of manure at the stables, mostly because there was nothing much to do and Petra was there to mess with. Petra had pulled him down along with her, and ended up sitting on his back while he tried to keep his face away from the horse shit he was lying in, but even if she'd won that fight she was still filthy as anything by the time her shift ended.

She headed for the barracks, hoping to catch a shower before any of her superiors saw fit to punish her, when a voice said behind her.

"You, Ral."

It was the kind of voice that spelled rank, so Petra was saluting even before she'd finished whirling around.

"Sir!"

She looked for the officer behind her. Then she looked lower. Then she swallowed, and her throat gave a tiny, audible click. Everyone knew how much Captain Levi valued cleanliness, and what he did to slobs.

"What do you think you're doing?" Captain Levi asked, neat and dapper and standing two meters away from Petra as if she were a mucky frog that might leap at him.

"Sorry, Captain! I had an accident during stable duty, Captain! I was just about to put myself to order, Captain!"

"You don't have to end every sentence with my rank," Captain Levi said, in the same impassive voice he'd used throughout the exchange. "Come with me."

Petra followed, not too closely. The last thing she needed was to bump into his back the way she smelled now. She wondered what her punishment would be. The horror stories flashed into her mind. About the guy who was caught with lice, and how Captain Levi made him shave _all_ the hair on his body, and then bathe in kerosene, lard and vinegar for a month. Or the girl who wiped her nose with her sleeve in front of him, and how he sent her to the nearest elementary school to be "taught basic manners" and then stared disdainfully at her sleeves every time he saw her. Now Petra was the one who was about to turn into another cautionary tale, and she wasn't looking forwards to it.

Captain Levi led her into the herb garden behind the kitchens. Petra was glad, as much as she could be glad while expecting imminent and thorough humiliation. At least the place was mostly deserted.

"How many assistances do you have so far, Ral?"

Petra blinked. This was an unexpected line of interrogation.

"Five, sir?" It almost came out like a question.

"In two missions?"

"Yes," Petra said, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"That's not bad, for a rookie," Captain Levi said, and Petra felt her jaw hang open a little. "But no kills? Why's that?"

Petra would have said, "no luck" or "I'm just not that good, sir" to anyone else, but she didn't want to put herself down or invent excuses in front of Captain Levi, especially after he'd almost complimented her.

"I'd rather try for assistances, sir. I think I'm better at them."

Levi inclined his head, and his eyes caught the light oddly. Which was when Petra realized she'd been staring him in the face. You did not do that to superior officers after you'd just done something wrong. She hastily looked straight forward.

"Assistances are riskier, and less to brag about," Levi prompted.

It was true. Flying in front of a Titan to distract it was more dangerous than approaching from behind when it was already occupied. Petra figured someone had to do it, and she was fast, and good at dodging.

"As long as the Titan ends up dead in the end, what does it matter?" she said.

Levi was quiet, and Petra had a feeling he was assessing her against some unknown measure.

"I need people who can work in a team. Try to live through another couple of missions, and we'll talk again," Levi said at last, and bent down quickly to pick something from the ground.

Petra didn't know if she could trust her ears. She'd expected the dressing down of her life, and instead _the_ Captain Levi said he was thinking of recruiting her for his own team. They were the elite of the elite, and Petra had never even dared dream of joining their ranks.

"I'll do my best," she said, and felt a rush of relief and gratitude for Levi.

"See that you do," Captain Levi said.

Then he hosed her down with icy water until she felt like a drowned rat.

* * *

Petra raised her cheek off the ground. Her hair was still in her face, but it was entirely wet now and so easy to slick back. It was still light outside; she couldn't have been out of it for long. No one had come after her with a knife either, so it was probably safe to say there were no more assailants. She sat back with some effort, and looked up at the house.

The two corpses in the kitchen doorway were still there, of course. Petra made herself crawl up the steps. It was even easier to move this way when she didn't have to hang onto a knife. She was getting the hang of this. Propel yourself forward with your hands or elbows, and either slide on your stomach or alternate putting your weight on each hip.

She climbed over Mrs. Koch's body without looking at her, but she had to stop by the dead man beside her to go through his pockets. Petra had handled a lot of dead bodies, rounding up her fallen comrades during missions, but she'd never felt as disgusted as she did now. She didn't know if it was because she'd killed him herself, or because he was the first dead man she'd seen who deserved it. The man's paunch jiggled against her arm like a living thing. It wasn't even any use; she found nothing but chewing tobacco and a carefully folded handkerchief.

She kept crawling until she reached the hallway, and then repeated the whole search on the other corpse. There was even less to find here, nothing but a talisman with the three goddess-walls' faces. She turned it on a whim, and there was something scratched on the back. The letters were a little smoothed with time, but could still be read: FFS.

Petra turned her attention to her chair. One look was enough to see it was a lost cause, one of the wheels detached and bent, spokes sticking out. Petra gave it up, and kept on crawling. She pushed the box she'd come for in front of her, and dragged herself after it, to the door, down the front steps, along the path.

The muscles in her arms, back and belly were trembling, but she could see the cart out on the road. The cart, but no Claus. Maybe he was lying down, Petra thought, maybe the men hadn't noticed him. They'd come out from the field after all, their horses probably tethered to some tree out there instead of on the visible road. She managed to lie to herself until she yanked the gate open and saw Claus lying in the mud with his eyes full of raindrops and his throat slashed open so deep Petra could see bone in the wound.

She crawled towards him. For a moment she forgot the box, she forgot everything but that she needed to close his eyes. When she did, the water spilled from underneath his eyelids like tears.

Petra tried to haul him up into the cart, to get him back. It was impossible, with her strained muscles she wasn't sure she could lift herself up, let alone Claus. The most she managed was to brace him against the fence and cover him with the horse-cloth, so that he would at least be off the road and out of the rain. Then she realized she couldn't have taken him if she intended to get into the city - even the most incompetent gate guard would probably notice a corpse in an empty cart.

When it was done, Petra turned away from the lump that had been Claus, and looked down at herself. There was surprisingly little blood on her. Her clothes had been torn in places by the constant dragging, and she had a couple of scratches on her stomach and forearms, but otherwise she was unharmed. She tucked her shirt in her trousers where it had come loose. Her arms were still trembling and some muscles were twitching by themselves. The tips of her fingers had gone wrinkled like dried prunes, and they slipped nervelessly when she tried to lift herself onto the bench seat. She hung like a wet rag for a few seconds, before she heaved herself up and almost rolled right over with fatigue.

She managed to sit upright, and checked on the box she'd pushed up in the back first. It looked intact still, but Petra covered it with an upturned bucket just in case, and tugged on the reins. The horse turned eagerly enough, probably thinking she was headed back to her warm stable, and Petra resisted the urge to look at the house, at Claus's body, or to wonder what she would tell his parents.

She had a job to do.

* * *

The way back seemed even longer. Petra closed her cloak to hide her filthy clothes, and tried to smooth down her hair. The few horsemen she passed gave her startled looks, and she could only hope none of them would go far enough down the road to come across Claus's body. If someone made such a discovery and remembered she'd looked suspicious it would be a small matter to catch up with her. She pushed the tired horse as much as she dared, and tried to avoid the smooth patches on the road that indicated the deepest mud holes.

It became easier to blend in when she reached the intersection with the road leading to the gate. It was late afternoon and a stream of carts ran in both directions - the empty carts and drays of small traders who sold their merchandise directly out of them at the markets, the full ones making deliveries to the bakeries in the city where men worked through the night so that as early as five the next morning the first workers could buy fresh bread. Most of the empty carts were leaving Karanese, but still no one gave Petra a second glance.

The guards at the gate should be another matter, and Petra didn't look forward to having to talk her way in. She felt drained, and the effort of acting seemed beyond her now. At the same time she was aware she had to pass at any cost, and the pressure of it would probably make her seem even dodgier.

The gate came closer and the setting sun shone into Petra's eyes through it, blinding her. It was only after she'd followed the wagon in front and ridden under the wall that she could see the four soldiers on check-up duty, and realized she'd been to the academy with one of them.

The Garrison didn't much like the Survey Corps as a whole, but now Petra wasn't a part of the mass for them. One of theirs liked her, and while it suited them to think anyone who joined the Corps was stupid and arrogant, Petra had already paid for that arrogance and been put in her place, and that made her likeable. She was sure she would pass now. She came up with some story about spending the night at her aunt and planting face down in the mud on the way, and they waved her away with no problems.

On the other side of the gate, Petra resisted the urge to check if the precious box was still there, and clucked at the horse to go faster. It ignored her. The cart weaved through Karanese's narrow streets with difficulty, and with the waning light and still unlit street lanterns Petra worried she might get mixed up. The Survey Corps had taken up the old Garrison barracks in town, situated between the inner gate and the center of the city.

When she finally spotted the sawtooth-shaped battlements of the Supply building she felt like shaking with relief. She kept her eyes on them, almost afraid to blink even though there was no way she could fail to reach her destination now, until she actually drove under the tall arc and into the courtyard.

It was mostly deserted at the end of the day, except for Hange's squad unloading boxes of equipment on one end. Berner was wordily instructing a couple of unenthusiastic rookies. Behind him, Nifa wrote something on a board, and Keiji stood with his arms crossed and a bored expression on his face. He lost the look as soon as he saw Petra and jogged towards her while she pulled on the reins with her last strength and almost toppled backwards. Keiji's eyes travelled over her.

"What's the problem, Ral?" he asked, low. Nifa had tucked the board under her arm and headed towards them as well, and Berner had stopped gesticulating. You learned to nose out trouble in the Corps.

"Is Captain Levi in?" Petra asked breathlessly.

Keiji opened his mouth to answer but Nifa cut in.

"The Corporal said he had night training with the rookies, but I don't know if they left yet."

"What about the Commander?" Petra asked, realizing she probably should have done so in the first place. Of course she should go to the Commander with information as important as this, and that would be what Captain Levi would do as soon as she told him anyway. But Levi had been the one to approach her with this and the one she was used to answering to, so her first instinct was to look for him.

"Yeah, the Corporal's with him," Keiji shifted his weight from one leg to another, which in him was as good as shouting how nervous he was. "What's this about?"

By then Berner had wandered over, and his soldiers had stopped pretending to try and carry anything and were giving them uncertain glances over the forgotten crates.

"I really need to show him something," Petra said. She reached back to retrieve the box, and hugged it close to her front. "You have to carry me there, Keiji. Nifa, send someone to check if Captain Levi is still in."

They had been the same rank while Petra was still on duty, and both knew her well enough to have noticed that she didn't relish ordering people around for the sake of it. Petra hoped that would convince them to go along with her without having to explain out here in the open.

"I'm on it," Nifa said and threw Petra one last curious look before heading back. Keiji took a step towards her, put one arm around Petra's back and another under her legs. The bridal carry was a bit hard to pull off when you held someone with no legs, but Keiji adjusted his grip with no instructions. Petra hid the box under her cloak, and Keiji carried her towards the building with a grunt.

The girl Nifa had sent to fetch Levi took the steps two at a time ahead of them. Petra hoped with irrational intensity Levi would still be here. It wasn't like he couldn't come back from training in a few minutes, but she still wanted them to discover this secret together.

The Commander's office was on the second floor, and it took Petra until the landing to notice Berner had come with them. He gave her a defiant look when Petra raised her eyebrows at him over Keiji's shoulder. They passed a few people, some of which called out to them when they recognized Petra, but Keiji picked up the pace and soon they were standing in front of Commander Erwin's carved wooden door. Berner weaved in front to knock, and a moment later the Commander's measured voice bid them to come inside.

Petra had never been to this office before, but she might as well have been. It was the usual nondescript room with big windows, a couple of chairs in front of a desk, and the Commander's books and maps stored on shelves and strewn about in a sort of controlled chaos. The Commander and Corporal Hange were behind the desk, drawing. Or at least they had been before the intrusion.

"Sorry to disturb you, Commander, but Petra Ral says she needs to see you on urgent business."

"Whoa, Petra!" Hange said, tucking her pencil behind one ear. "Long time no see. Set her down, Keiji. Oh, wait, let me move that first."

Keiji silently looked at the Commander, who nodded, before letting Petra down on the chair Corporal Hange had cleared from an armful of scrolls.

"It's about that thing Captain Levi asked me to look into, Commander," Petra said without prompting.

"Oh," the Commander said. Nothing in his face changed, but then he turned over to Keiji and Berner and said. "Ask Captain Levi to join us. After that you're dismissed."

Berner said that was already done, and he and Keiji filed out of the room. Neither seemed too keen on leaving. Petra heard the door opening behind her, taking too long to shut closed once more. Commander Erwin glanced briefly at it over Petra's chair, then turned the full force of his quiet, penetrating gaze on Petra.

"Continue."

Petra tried to put her thoughts in order and figure out where to start. She'd been so focused on delivering the box here that she hadn't considered for a second how she was going to explain all this. She glanced at Corporal Hange uncertainly, who had started looking curious at some point.

"I followed the trail of Dr Schulek's letter. It turned out he and Dr Jaeger had been part of the same research team," she started, fishing out the report she'd stolen from the archives from her vest pocket and handing it to the Commander. She'd put it in an oiled leather pouch to keep it safe from the rain, and thankfully that had protected it while she'd crawled in the mud as well.

The Commander unfolded the document carefully. Hange rounded the desk to read over his shoulder. Petra had added in hand the fields of each of the participants.

"They were only pretending to study vaccination to get the Military Police off their backs and to wheedle funds out of the University administration," Petra continued. The more she talked, the easier it became. "In reality, they were working on something else."

The Commander leaned back in his chair.

"What else?"

Petra had her speculations, but she figured it would be easier to produce Andrea Mieg's message and later elaborate on any parts in her story that might need explaining instead of rambling about the ragged patchwork of the past she'd barely assembled. The Commander would surely draw more accurate or swifter conclusions than Petra, anyway.

"I have the notes left behind by one of the team's members. She buried them with instructions to be made public if anything happened to her right before she disappeared," Petra slid the metal box onto the desk. Bits of rust clung to her palms when she let go of it.

The Commander drew the box close, and Petra hesitated how to voice the next part. The Commander was watching her, face blank, not hurrying to open it just yet. Corporal Hange was busy rummaging around the desk for something.

"I was picking them up when two men arrived and killed the woman who gave me the box and the boy who helped me get there," Petra said. She was glad her voice sounded nearly neutral. "They went after me as well."

The floorboards behind her gave a violent creak and Petra turned around automatically. She practically choked on her own tongue when she saw Captain Levi there.

"How long were you-"

"Since Hange's men left," Levi answered her. He came closer, until he was looming over Petra. "Are you hurt? Did you kill them?"

"No, and yes," Petra said, contrite. She knew it would have been better if she'd only incapacitated at least one, for interrogation. "I couldn't have gotten away otherwise."

"Good," Captain Levi said, but didn't elaborate. He bypassed Petra to sit on the edge of the desk without asking for permission.

"You know, Levi," the Commander said, conversationally. "When you said you had someone working on this I assumed it was one of your contacts from the time before you joined the Survey Corps."

"You assumed right," Levi said. "Petra was just faster."

The words caused a rush of pride to swell deep in her chest, but Petra mercilessly contained it for later. Now wasn't the time to think of personal stuff.

The silence was broken by Corporal Hange's smashing the padlock into iron flakes with the letter opener she'd finally located.

"Let's get this beauty opened up now," she said, with a gleam in her eye usually reserved for Titans. She stuck the letter opener under the lid, and levered it open a crack. The hinges stuck, but another pull had the lid flung open. There was another box inside, much better preserved. The Commander reached for the clasp and opened it. Petra leaned in to see what was inside along with everyone else.

There was a roll of thick, waxed paper covered in dense script, somewhat faded but clearly legible. The Commander reached carefully inside. Petra scarcely dared to breathe while he untied them and spread them out on the desk. A few seconds passed before Petra realized he was reading them silently.

"Don't be stingy," Commander Levi said. The Commander smiled so slightly Petra wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it, before beginning to read out loud. The first paragraph was Andrea Mieg introducing herself and her "fellow explorers" as she put it. Petra had expected a dry and factual account of her and the others' research, but what she heard was much more frantic and informal.

* * *

_I can only hope that anyone who might read this would not dismiss my story as the ravings of a fevered mind. I met Frantishek Wilde soon after I earned the title of Doctor of Chemistry. He approached me with no introduction and no prior acquaintance to discuss a manuscript he had discovered by accident in a hidden compartment in Professor Phol's library. Professor Phol had been a respected historian who'd died recently, and who'd taken Wilde as an assistant. Wilde showed me the manuscript. It appeared to be much older than a hundred years and it professed to be a copy of an even earlier work. Despite this, it mentioned the Titans. I was skeptic initially, but testing the paper proved it might well be several hundred years old._

_In the manuscript, Titans were referred to as "unstable and unreliable tools" and the author professed his wish for humanity to move to a place without them. The text also contained detailed technical descriptions of a machine that could bring humans to this place without Titans, as well as maps and the medical precautions that must be taken in order for the journey to be safe. Most of the terms and all place names were unfamiliar to me. There were no walls marked on the maps. Fortunately, Wilde has convinced others besides me to join him. After more than a year of working together, we believed we'd understood the manuscript enough to be able to find and operate this mysterious machine. How wrong we were._

_We set out on a journey to the Strija Mountains. We had to enter an underground tunnel not included in conventional maps, which we followed for two days. Eventually it lead us to a vast chamber that contained the machine we'd been looking for, arranged in a circle around a shallow water pool. It took us a week to make it work._

_When we turned it on, the machine made the water glow with peculiar blue light. With no action on our part, a narrow stone slab rose from the water, just wide enough for a single person to walk to the middle of the lake. There was a baby on the slab. We were extremely surprised by that. Eventually, we retrieved the baby and our doctors examined it. It appeared to be perfectly healthy. We had suspected that the machine was some kind of portal to the place free of Titans, but the appearance of the baby made our theory more plausible. We didn't know why it was sent on our end, but we decided to try sending something through the portal._

_We started with inanimate objects - a pen, a shoe, an apple. We managed to send away and return all of them, apparently unchanged. We proceeded with mice, with much the same results. We were afraid they might drown in the water, but perhaps the glowing substance was something else, or else the mice didn't stay inside for long, because they came back alive and healthy. Encouraged, we agreed that we had to try sending one of us. Wilde was the one most eager, and since he wasn't needed to operate the machine there was no reason not to send him. We tied a rope to his waist and secured the other end to the wall. He walked to the middle of the glowing lake, and then we lowering him into the water. I'd never seen Wilde happier._

_When we tried to bring Wilde back, the slab surfaced empty. The end of the rope disappeared under the water. We got very worried. We tried to pull the rope to up. At first, it rose without resistance, but then suddenly something tugged back with great force. We all lost out balance, and Schulek's arm dipped into the water to the shoulder. He had just taken it out, when something burst out of the pool._

_It was an arm, a massive Titans arm. Before any of us could react, a shoulder and then a head broke the surface too. It resembled Wilde, and yet it was nothing like him. It let out an inhuman wail that echoed off the walls so wildly I feared it had burst my eardrums. But there was more to fear. It appeared that the monster's shoulders were too wide to fit through the pool's surface, but it was trying nonetheless. The machine cracked and broke down, and the glow in the water disappeared._

_The Titan didn't. It waved his arm about in the chamber, grabbing at us, while we tried to avoid it and reach the tunnel that lead out of the chamber. Kreuz and Larionova couldn't escape, and neither could the baby. The Titan ate them all. The rest of us ran into the tunnel with no supplies, equipment and none of our notes, without even a torch. We could hear the Titan raging behind us, until there was a crash and the ground shook. I think the chamber collapsed from its trashing._

_The rest of us ran in the dark, with no food and no rest. We followed the tunnel until we burst into the sunlight. We thought it was over, but once we reached the outside something started happening to Schulek. The arm that had slid into the water started pulsing and growing grotesquely. Spongy, stringy muscles enveloped it. He started screaming. He said he felt like his skin was being dissolved. The red mass crept up his arm. Koller and I stood rooted to the spot with horror, but Jaeger didn't lose his head. He hacked at the mass with his knife, and finally managed to free Schulek's arm. It was covered in scars and bits of flesh, but at least he still had it._

_We found out horses and headed back, but when we reached the road Jaeger said he wouldn't be coming back. He said he was going home to his wife, and that he'd had enough of University life. He set off for his hometown, and the three of us could only watch him in dismay._

_Since we've been back, I can't think of anything else. A man I knew turned into a Titan almost before my eyes. I saw irrefutable proof that an ancient machine could sometimes turn humans into Titans, and sometimes transport objects to an unknown location. Half the people I worked with on the most important project I could ever imagine are dead, and the other half are lost to me. Koller and Schulek refuse to talk to me. They say we can't tell anyone about this, that we'd be branded madmen at best and traitors at worst._

_I don't know what to do, but I know I must do something, and for that I need proof. Tonight, I'm going to try and find Wilde's manuscript. He didn't bring it with us on the expedition, which means it must be somewhere in his house. There was more than one machine marked on the maps there and that should be proof enough. For now, I enclose the instructions for creating the injections that the manuscript stressed were vital for safe travel. I remember them by heart, since I recreated most of them. Although considering what happened to Wilde, there's a high chance the formula's wrong._

_We were so close. I can't accept defeat. We must get it right next time. No matter what, humanity must get it right next time._

* * *

As soon as the Commander finished, corporal Hange plucked the last sheet from between his fingers.

"I want to take a look at that formula," she said, her eyes shining.

The Commander didn't protest, just sat back and steepled his fingers. Captain Levi looked like he was set in stone. Petra couldn't remember when he'd last moved, even to blink, but he must have, because now he had one foot resting against the side of her chair when he hadn't before. They were all so calm. Petra's stomach was doing cartwheels, and her mind was flickering from one unanswered question to another like a dog chasing its tail.

"None of this must leave this room for now," the Commander said. Corporal Hange lifted her head from her reading, looking like she was about to start tearing out her hair.

"Does that mean the physical documents too? Because I need the originals to-"

"We'll discuss this later," the Commander cut her off smoothly, and turned towards Petra. "Tell me more about how you obtained these."

Petra told him about the trail of petty misdemeanors that had led her to Varvara Koch. When she got to the attack, Captain Levi finally shifted, his narrowed eyes betraying his interest.

"Did the men who attacked you say anything?" the Commander asked, throwing a quick, almost concerned look at Levi's back.

"Nothing of substance. I think they were surprised to find me there," Petra said.

"Did they look like Military Police?" Captain Levi asked.

Petra shook her head.

"They were too heavy to be in the army. But they knew their way with a knife," she raked her tired brain some more. "Oh, one of them carried a Wall Cult relic in his pocket. There was an inscription in the back - the letters FFS."

Neither the Commander nor Levi reacted at that, though Petra knew that didn't know anything.

"And this manuscript? Do you have any idea what happened to it?"

"Only that Mieg disappeared right after leaving this message. Wilde's house burned down soon after that. Mrs. Koch thought the Military Police were responsible."

There was another silence, punctuated by Corporal Hange's scribbling. Petra realized suddenly she couldn't hear the rain. Now it stopped, when she was finally under a roof. Of course.

The Commander stood up suddenly.

"Well, that's enough for now. I'm sure you're tired," he said. He came up to Petra's chair and picked up her hand, staring earnestly in her eyes. "Thank you. This information is invaluable."

Even though she realized he said it partly to cover the sting of excluding her from any further discussion, Petra felt flustered at the sincere gratitude. She had no reason to feel offended, wasn't, really - she wasn't high rank, she wasn't even in the Survey Corps anymore, and she'd been lucky the Commander had decided to share as much as he did. Still, it was disappointing to be shown in no uncertain terms that her part in this was over, that from now on other people would be struggling to fit together more pieces of the puzzle their survival depended on assembling.

"I was just doing my duty, sir. I haven't told anyone about this and I don't intend to," Petra said, and the Commander nodded with businesslike approval.

Levi stood up as well.

"Come on, I'll get you to a room," he told Petra, then looked at Erwin as if daring him to object. The Commander looked tolerantly amused, as if Levi was annoying but in a charming way.

"Certainly," Erwin said, releasing Petra's hand and stepping out of the way. "Come back when you're finished."

Levi stooped and gathered Petra in his arms, and she felt suddenly out of breath. It wasn't the carry her brothers or Keiji had used. Levi fit Petra against his hip, her stumps flanking his thigh, and his forearm naturally supporting her hips. Her arms came up automatically around his shoulders to brace herself. It was too bad she wasn't too tired or confused not to feel shy at the proximity.

The hold left one of his arms free. Like everything Captain Levi did, this action too had a practical reason. He carried Petra outside with no further ceremony. The Commander was already back behind his desk before the door closed behind them, and Hange hadn't even lifted her head to see them go. It was doubtful she noticed at all. 

The corridors were crawling with people by now, and Petra was so busy with trying not to catch anyone's eye while also trying not to breathe in Commander Levi's neck, that it took her a few moments to remember she had some things to talk about that she couldn't have brought up in front of the Commander.

"Claus' parents must be worried sick by now. I just left him by the side of the road," Petra said quietly. Her chin dipped until it almost touched Captain Levi's shoulder. She would have to go and see them. She owed them that, even though she couldn't even offer an explanation why their son had died. But in the meantime, she felt like she was avoiding responsibility.

"Erwin will probably send me there later. I'll take care of him," Levi said, not looking at her. He didn't sound winded at all, even though he was taking the stairs at a brisk, stable pace. "What about _your_ parents?"

"I left word I might stay the night here," Petra answered. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Tomorrow I'll let them know you'll be staying longer."

"I will be?"

"Yes. We're very popular these days; who knows who noticed you come in. It will be safer for both you and your family if you stay here."

Petra kept quiet for a moment, absorbing this. She felt bone tired, and she didn't want to think, or remember. This close, she couldn't help but smell Levi’s scent, collar starch, soap and just a hint of warm skin. He'd taken a splinter in the calf once, during a mission, and he'd let Petra support him while he walked because she was the one closest to his height in the squad. She had found his scent just as distracting then.

Levi didn't bring her to any of the living quarters on the upper floors. Instead he took a turn to the showers on the last floor. Petra hadn't expected it, but she was glad. No matter how tired she was the thought of going to sleep without cleaning up didn't seem very appealing.

The sign on the door of the female changing room read "unoccupied" and Levi brought Petra in without any trace of hesitation. He let her down on a stool under one of the showerheads, before handing her a bar of soap from the soap-box attached to the wall too high for Petra to reach.

"I will get someone to bring you clean clothes and escort you downstairs," he said, about to leave. Petra fidgeted in place, gathering her courage.

"What is it?" Levi asked, observant as usual. Petra had to crane her neck awkwardly to look him in the face.

"I just wanted to thank you for coming to me with that letter. When the Commander mentioned you had other people working on it I realized it must have been for my benefit. It really helped me get back on my feet," she stopped and laughed a little at her own words. Here, with Captain Levi next to her, it was possible to do that without any bitterness. "That was a terrible choice of words, but I mean it. Thank you."

Levi's eyes were in shadow when he was looking down at her and Petra couldn't really read his expression. He reached out, slowly, and put a hand on Petra's head, pressing down on it almost playfully.

"I'm not that charitable," he said. "And you sell yourself short. You came through for me in the end. Don't forget that."

He left right after that and Petra smiled to herself quietly all the way through her shower. The water was freezing, she felt guilty for getting Claus killed, for getting her parents to worry about her once more, but the smile somehow kept on returning.

* * *

It took a long time to take every last trace of mud out of her hair. Petra marveled both at how she'd managed to turn into a swamp monster without realizing it, and at how Captain Levi hadn't mentioned a word about it. She stood under the spray until she was pink and shivering, and then put on the uniform trousers and shirt a girl with a perky ponytail and a perkier smile brought her. Petra recognized her as one of Eren's ex-yearmates, Sasha Braus.

Sasha said she had orders to stick close to Petra until further notice, and proceeded to give her a piggyback ride to Captain Levi's room.

"The captain said to tell you the sheets are clean, and to make use of them because he won't be tonight," Sasha said, before unloading Petra on the bed. "Sorry, did that hurt? Sorry. I'll be right outside, so yell if you need anything."

She carried out Levi's desk chair into the corridor and shut the door, leaving Petra alone. Under different circumstances Petra would have tied herself into a knot over sleeping in Captain Levi's bed, but her every last bit of energy was burned out by now. She wondered how late it was. Probably not that late, but it still felt like she'd been awake until the small hours.

She shimmied on top of the blanket until she managed to slip under it, then flopped onto her belly and stretched out on the crisp sheets. The last thing she remembered was slipping out of her trousers because the top button dug into her belly uncomfortably.

She woke to the quick shine of light from the corridor, Levi slipping inside the room before it was once again plunged into darkness.

"Captain, what's going on?" Petra mumbled, her head fuzzy. She rose on her elbows.

"Nothing, go back to sleep," Levi said.

In the murky moonlight filtering through the thin curtains Petra could just make him out his outline, sitting on his rescued chair and resting his elbows on the desk.

"What time is it?" she asked, rubbing furiously at her eyes.

"It's late. Early," he answered, and half-turned towards her, slinging one arm over the back of the chair. His whole posture radiated exhaustion. "I'll go wait for dawn in the mess hall."

"Don't go!" Petra said, sounding foolishly eager to her own ears. "I mean, you need to rest, and I doubt I'll get to sleep again tonight. We should switch."

She gestured between the chair and the bed, even though the gesture would probably go unnoticed in the darkness. Levi hesitated, but finally got up, and Petra sat in the bed as well. 

Instead of picking her up though, Levi sat down beside her.

"You should really get some sleep," Petra persisted, when it became obvious Levi was in no hurry to claim back his bed.

"I have to be awake in two hours, to stand guard at some pointless procession of the Wall Cult. If I sleep now I'll only be duller afterwards," he said, and started tugging off his boots.

"Oh," Petra said, before another thought presented itself for consideration. "You went to Mrs. Koch's house, didn't you?"

Levi lined up his boots neatly by the side of the bed, took off his jacket and hung it from a bedpost, then leaned back against the footboard before answering. 

"Yes."

"And?"

Levi shrugged. Petra felt it through the shift in the mattress rather than seeing it.

"There were already guards there. You won't need to have any dealings with them over this."

Petra knew well how persuasive Levi could be when he wanted it, but this didn't do anything to ease her guilty conscience. But then, a few uncomfortable questions from the guards wouldn't bring Claus back. She forced herself not to think about it. Instead, she curled up at the opposite end of the bed form Levi.

"Will you tell me when you find out who sent them?" Petra asked, then realized how much she was pushing her luck. "Never mind, sorry. I know you have too much on your plate, and this isn't that important."

"I already know, and you should too. It was probably the Wall Cult," he said, matter-of-factly. "FFS means 'For faithful service'. Lower Cina had a few fanatic thugs that were proud of trinkets like these."

So now the Wall Cult had a part in the whole mess. She tried to sort it out in her head - Titans much older than anyone had imagined, fantastic underground lakes that led to unknown lakes, conspiracies and murder. If it wasn't for Eren, she might have thought that Wilde and his colleagues were insane, and that all of them were chasing after mists and delusions.

Eren, Petra thought, dozing while the sky outside lightened up gradually. Everything circled back to Eren.

* * *

Levi got up as soon as the fist clapper knocks came from the yard. He'd had his eyes closed for a while, and Petra had kept quiet and still so as not to disturb him, but judging by the quick, smooth way he rolled out of bed he hadn't slept at all. He drew the curtains open, and stood squinting in the sudden light.

Petra flung off the blanket and drew a hand through her hair, hoping she didn't look like a scarecrow. The soldier in her was raring to start her morning routine - a wash with cold water, combing and parting her hair before the small round mirror hanging on the wall, putting on the uniform waiting on a hanger since the night before, then bounding down the stairs for a bite to eat before the porridge got cold and all the unchipped tea mugs were taken. But this wasn't her room and she wasn't a soldier anymore. She had no idea what she should do now.

Levi turned away from the window. His eyes flicked to Petra's face, then slid down to the disheveled rest of her, and his whole expression darkened. That was when Petra remembered that she'd taken her trousers off last night, and her cheeks turned hot so fast she could almost feel the rush of blood.

It was ridiculous, really, because the borrowed shirt was too big and covered up pretty much anything that decency demanded be covered, and even if it hadn't been, military issue drawers weren’t designed with the purpose of seduction in mind and it showed. And yet it wasn't ridiculous at all, because Petra's ruined legs still showed under the shirt, and she never in a million years wanted Levi to see that.

"Ah, sorry, I will get dressed right away. My uniform should be here somewhere," Petra babbled. The uniform was, in fact, on the ground by the other side of the bed and she wouldn't be able to snag it without bending over. She dawdled helplessly with her hands twisted in the sheets, wondering if it would be even more awkward and obvious if she covered up with the blanket again.

Levi covered the distance between them and kneeled down by the bed.

"Can I?"

Petra nodded, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to. Levi's graceful fingers reached slowly for her, leaving no doubt about his intention. When Petra didn't protest, he touched the end of her left stump, first softly with his fingertips, then with the pad of his thumb, tracing the dark red lines of recovering stitches.

"Does it hurt?" he asked. He didn't look at her with disgust, pity or fascination. He just looked, like she was an old friend he hadn't seen in a while and he was taking notice of inconsequential changes like a new haircut and deeper laugh-lines.

"Only when I try to stand on them," Petra said, and licked her lips. "But even that's supposed to pass with time. The only thing that won't change is that they won't grow back. Too bad I'm not like Eren, isn't it?"

"Yes," Captain Levi said, fingers lingering on her skin. "Too bad."

* * *

Petra thought Levi would bring her along downstairs, but he told her he'll have Sasha over again, and left alone. Petra fished he trousers from the floor and put them on, and wondered if she could pin the empty flapping legs with something.

Sasha turned up with puffy eyes and crooked uniform, looking like she'd sleepwalked there, and Petra all the way to the mess hall Petra wondered if she would lose her footing and send both of them flying down the stairs.

The mess hall had the usual air of cranky competition for food. Sasha deposited Petra on a bench and left her with the promise that she'd get them some "good grub". Petra watched her elbow and weave her way towards the half-empty cauldron of porridge, not feeling hungry at all.

Her parents would probably find out about Claus today, and even with Levi's message they were bound t worry about her. she wished she could see them, just to reassure them, but at the same time she wanted to stay put, even if it meant feeling useless and needing a green rookie like Sasha to take care of her. She felt like the Corps were teetering on the edge of something, some shocking revelation, some astonishing discovery, and she didn't want to miss it. It was completely irrational - just because a lot had changed recently it didn't mean things would continue moving at the same pace, but still, Petra didn't want to leave. Or maybe it was intuition, or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Sasha came back with two bowls and two tankards, flopped down on the seat opposite Petra, and started wolfing down her food as if she was in one of those greasy spoons where they kicked you out after ten minutes. Petra tried not to make contact with anyone else, not wanting to have to explain what the hell she was doing here. It was odd, but even though the room was bursting with people she knew and she wasn't exactly blending in, everyone seemed to not notice her.

"Ah, that hit the spot," Sasha said, and zeroed in on Petra's uneaten food. "Are you going to finish this?"

Petra pushed the bowl towards her and Sasha didn't waste any time tucking in.

"So what's this I hear about some Wall Cult procession?" Petra asked, deciding she might as well pump Sasha for information while the kid was blissed out on her breakfast. "Since when it's our job to guard them?"

Sasha shrugged.

"The mayor asked us for assistance," she said. "Armin said some people are resentful that the city's paying our expenses, so he's trying to show he can force us to earn our keep. We’re only sending a few people for show anyway. It's actually the Military Police who's in charge of keeping things peaceful."

This made sense, for the most part. Only.

"If it's only for show, why is Captain Levi going?" Petra asked, folding her arms on top of the table and resting her chin on top of them.

"I think some Wall Cult big shot requested him. Even the Patriarch is coming today, so maybe they want to show off," Sasha said, and took a comically exaggerated look around to make sure no one was listening. "Maybe Commander Erwin didn't put much of a protest because the Captain's been getting funny lately. Guess being cooped up inside the walls has been getting to him. But it's not like we can go on another expedition anytime soon."

"No funding?" Petra asked, sympathetically. That was the problem, usually. Though it was odd, if all those rich people were so willing to get their land back through Eren, shouldn't they have been willing to foot the bill?

"Yeah, that's it," Sasha said, looking shifty. If all these rookies couldn't lie any better than Petra, the Survey Corps really was in trouble.

She was about to press the issue when a loud clatter made her turn her head for the source of the noise. It was Eren, stopped short at the sight of her with a tankard rolling at his feet. He looked like he wanted to approach her but wasn't sure if he'd be welcome, and Petra felt her usual carefree smile creeping on her face.

Eren made his way over, looking like a puppy expecting to be scolded for misbehaving.

"Petra," he said, voice cracking a little. He glared furiously, like it would make up for the show of emotion. "Shouldn't you be in bed or something?"

"What, because of the legs? It's been weeks now. I'm fine already," Petra said. "What about you? How have you been doing without me to keep you up in shape?"

Eren looked conflicted. He glanced towards where Sasha and his friend with the red scarf were shamelessly listening in, and then gave Petra his best, determined smile. It showed an impressive amount of teeth.

"Want to see?"

* * *

Petra rode on Eren's back to the abandoned goods depot that served as a makeshift training ground. The red-scarfed girl, Mikasa, had offered to carry Petra instead of him, which had prompted a squabble, and so now Petra and Eren lagged behind the rest of the group. Mikasa threw them dejected glances from time to time.

"You should be nicer to your friend," Petra mused. "You'd miss her if she was gone."

Eren huffed stubbornly. "She's not going anywhere."

Aside from that Petra was starting to appreciate this mode of transport. True, unlike with the chair she couldn't move by herself at all, but in terms of having private conversations with people it was invaluable. The best part was, they couldn't escape you.

"Listen, I can tell you've been beating yourself up over what happened. I want you to stop," she said, practically in Eren's ear. The rhythm of his steps faltered briefly.

"It _is_ my fault. I know it's not only mine, but I was also responsible, and if you say I wasn't I won't believe you," Eren answered stubbornly. "And it's not only your call to make. You can't forgive me for the others."

"Yeah, but I can speak for myself. And if I started assigning blame to anyone other than the Female Titan you wouldn't be first on the list. Maybe I should blame the Commander, for not telling us what the mission was. Or Captain Levi, for leaving us. Or us, for overestimating our abilities," Her arms tightened around Eren's shoulders convulsively. "We wanted to prove ourselves to you so bad, to earn your trust, to protect you as a team, and we couldn't. If anyone failed that day it was us. We failed you, so don't try to take on the weight of our mistakes."

There was only the sound of boots clicking on cobblestones for a while.

"I'm glad you're back anyway. And I'm going to fight for all of you, so you don't need to worry," Eren said, with a sort of rough affection. Petra didn't think she'd convinced him entirely, but it was a start.

"I'm glad too, but you're awfully sure of yourself for a pipsqueak," Petra said, and this time wrapped her arms around Eren's head. He yelped.

"Watch it! I can't see where I'm going! You're only a couple of years older than me anyway! I'll drop you!"

But of course he didn't.

* * *

When the screams started Petra was sitting down in the shade of a scraggly tree on top of a stack of padding used for dummy Titans' necks. The crescendo of noise rose from the town center, and if it wasn't for its suddenness and the customary Survey Corps suspiciousness, Petra might have mistaken it as a roar of exultation. Eren had been showing her his new moves, as proud as her nephew whenever he won at Slippery Frog. Quick as a flash, he took off towards the commotion, shouting something like "take care of Petra" over his shoulder.

Petra would have given a lot to be able to follow them, to make sure their inexperience and cockiness didn't get them in trouble, to make sure Levi was all right. Instead, she had to let Sasha carry her back to the barracks. They couldn't even use 3D gear, when they tried Petra almost lost hold of the Sasha's harness on the first sharp turn.

The barracks were had emptied out by the time they returned, left with only a minimum crew that had no better idea what was going on than the two of them.

"Come on," Sasha said, breathlessly, once they figured out they wouldn't be getting any answers. "Upstairs.'

Petra wanted to be in the yard when the troops returned, but apparently Levi had told Sasha she would go without dinner for a year if anything happened to Petra, and that was a warning she took seriously.

Levi's room overlooked the courtyard, so Petra could at least study any movement in the direction of the town centre. She could just make out figures sprinting across rooftops and vaulting between buildings, but they were keeping fairly close to the ground. Sasha, who had better eyes, said that they looked like they were looking for something.

Petra was starting to feel the strain in her eyes one of the tiny figures started coming closer. It was difficult to tell at first, but then the whip-quick movements she knew so well made her certain that it was Captain Levi. When he didn't slow down or adjust the angle of flight at the closest row of buildings Petra leaned towards one end of the window and tugged Sasha along.

Levi landed lightly on the windowsill, obviously unharmed. Petra breathed a silent sigh of relief.

"Any problems here?" he asked Sasha, not sparing Petra a glance.

"Not a peep, captain," Sasha answered, hovering on the brink of a nervous salute.

"Good. Stay here for now. There'll be an equipment inspection later. I'll come back to relieve you then." Sasha nodded, and Levi's leg tensed as if he were about to jump out.

"What happened?" Petra blurted out before he could take off again. 

"Someone assassinated a Wall Cult official using 3D gear," Levi said, giving Petra an impatient look.

"Who, the Patriarch?"

"No, his secretary. Some guy called Reiss. Can I go now?" he asked, deadpan, and Petra nodded in embarrassment. Levi shot out in a different direction from the one he'd come from.

* * *

The morning sun turned into noon sun, then afternoon sun, warming Petra's neck where she sat with her back to the open window. She was slightly uncomfortable, sitting for hours in the same exact position. But she was too engrossed in her own thoughts to care.

The Wall Cult chose a different location for its yearly procession, but it seemed too much of a coincidence that they decided on Karanese this year. Petra didn't know if it was because of Eren and the Survey Corps, because they wanted to tie loose ends like Varvara Koch, or for some other purpose. She didn't think either the Military Police or the Wall Cult had seen the whole picture, but maybe they knew enough to feel they had to up their game.

Sasha's change came around noon. It wasn't Levi, but another boy from Eren's year, a tall, light-haired one that Petra knew the least about. It turned out his name was Jean Kirstein and that he in turn knew nothing about where Levi had gone off to, only that the inspection hadn't found anything suspicious and that no one was missing. So that ruled out a set up - if anyone wanted to pin an assassination attempt on the Survey Corps they weren’t doing a terribly good job of it.

The shadows outside were long and the light tinted with orange by the time Levi came back, this time through the door. Petra watched his profile through the half-opened door while he gave Kirstein some last instruction in a low voice. His recently washed, barely dried hair hung down limply, and the circles around his eyes had darkened to the pint they resembled the hollow eye pits of a skull. Petra averted her gaze, not wanting to imagine him like this.

Levi came fully into the room and closed the door with finality.

"You need anything?" he asked Petra.

She shook her head. "I'd like to know what happened today."

"Some bastard with a mask and an army uniform with no jacket zipped down from a window and cut off some other bastard's head. Then the bastards from the military Police tried to pull their usual shit and make it someone else's fault," Levi told her, shrugging his own jacket off. It made Petra feel like she was intruding somehow, to see him so casual. He took off the gear as well and set it down on the desk. He didn't touch the harness. "I need to sleep now. Do you prefer to stay here tonight, or do you want them to find you a free room. There aren't any recently cleaned ones."

"Oh, here, if that's all right. It would be just like training marches, wouldn't it?" Petra said in a rush. She'd been on a few of those with the rest of Team Levi. The days were all grueling running through hard terrain with packs so big you couldn't see the head of the person before you, but during the night they'd line up their sleeping bags and huddle for warmth. Petra had rarely felt so close to other human beings, in her coveted spot between Gunther on one side - who didn't snore or kick in his sleep, and Levi on the other, who was just Levi. Last night had also been oddly peaceful, even if neither of them had slept after Levi had come in.

Levi stared at her blankly, and it took Petra a few moments to realize she hadn't asked if she wanted to share the room with him, that he wanted to know if he should go and claim one of those unused rooms for himself. She felt her eyes going wide with horrified embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I'll be fine with any free room," she said desperately.

"I don't mind," Levi said, neutral, stopping Petra in her tracks.

His bed was a narrow, military issue one, but neither of them took up much space. Petra lay on her side, head resting on a corner of the pillow, Levi stretched out on his back behind her. At least there was plenty of legroom, Petra thought, the whole thing feeling surreal, significant, nothing like camping together. It’s far from usual to sleep in the bed of your superior officer, but then Petra should face that's really not who Levi is to her nowadays.

"I have no idea how to keep doing my duty," she said, surprising herself with the words, with the fact she had spoken at all.

A rustle from Levi's side of the bed, too loud in the velvety darkness.

"Don't worry about that any more. Just keep living," the voice sounded from a different angle, almost as if Levi's head was leaning towards hers on their shared pillow, and Petra felt, or thought she felt, the touch of something against her hair. A hand, a cheek, a lock of Levi's own, mingling with hers, it didn't matter what, only that the ghost of a touch soothed her and made her feel safe.

* * *

Levi was gone when Petra woke up, and that was a surprise because she'd always been a light sleeper. Like a rabbit, her father used to say, dozing with one eye open and ready to bolt.

Kirstein showed up this morning too, and he blushed when he had to bring Petra to the bathroom. It wasn't like he'd needed to stay inside the cubicle with her, he only had to lay down two folded sheets of newspaper on the footrests and lower Petra down, before closing the door. The unused portion of the newspaper stood rolled up on top of the roll of toilet paper, with the headline on the side. It said "Unrest in Karanese after Assassination Attempt". Petra snatched it up and skimmed over the article - apparently three members of the Wall Cult had committed suicide since yesterday morning, and others, including the Patriarch, had disappeared overnight with theirs and others' horses and valuables.

Petra couldn't think of a reason why the death of a mere secretary would send them into such frenzy.

"Are you all right in there? Do you need any help?" Kirstein asked with a hint of trepidation from the other side of the cubicle door, like he very much hoped there wasn't a problem because he knew it would very quickly become his to deal with.

Petra could sympathize.

* * *

Kirstein brought Petra to the showers next, then to breakfast, the both of them growing steadily more uncomfortable with the other. For some reason, Petra had started to mind being touched by strangers, and Kirstein's embarrassment didn't help.

She was looking for a way to diffuse the tension when Eren bound over to them, which ended up solving that problem. Kirstein only had eyes for Eren's friend, and Eren made it obvious he wanted to talk to Petra without Kirstein around. The easiest resolution was to let Eren pick her up once more and take her out in the courtyard where they could finish munching on their bread and discuss what had happened yesterday.

"It was over by the time we got there. There were people running around everywhere, and we didn't see whoever did it at all," Eren said, once they'd sat down on a bench by a horse trough. "I hope we don't have to investigate this, otherwise we _really_ wouldn't get to leave for another expedition for ages."

"Actually, why aren't you at least setting up another expedition?" Petra asked. Eren shrugged awkwardly with one shoulder. His Adam's apple bobbed and for a moment he looked lost and painfully young. Petra caught his hand.

"Hey, what is it?"

The look Eren gave her brought her back to the hospital room, the same guilt and bewilderment at the unfairness of the world.

"We can't leave because Annie-- because the Female Titan is kept here," he whispered, not meeting Petra's eyes. "She's been waking up, every couple of weeks, and the Commander has orders to keep the Captain and me around in case we have to deal with her." 

Petra felt like she was floating, or wearing thick gloves all of a sudden; she could barely feel where she was touching Eren. Everything felt muted and distant except the wild stab of rage.

"So she's here. Where?"

"Under the city," Eren answered, looking like it had dawned on him talking about this wasn't the best idea.

"Is she still in the shell or whatever it was?" She made an effort to sound calm, and Eren must have been convinced because he relaxed somewhat.

"Yeah, it gets softer when she's conscious, like rubber, but she always goes under before anyone can cut through it."

Petra didn't ask any more questions, just stood staring into space, holding Eren's hand like a child clutching a comforting toy.

"Are you okay?" Eren said, uncharacteristically gently.

_Yeah, except for the fact I badly want to kill someone who's out of my reach._

"Yeah, I just didn't imagine she was so close, that's all," Petra said, bumping her shoulder against his. "You called her Annie. Did you know her?"

Now it was Eren's turn to be evasive.

"She was in the same year as me in the Academy," he shrugged. He was trying and failing to look nonchalant, but there was something else to the gesture, hidden helplessness shining through. " We weren’t friends. She didn't have any friends. She didn't look like she wanted any."

Not friends, but maybe Eren had wanted them to be. And wasn't that just the best. Petra's heart tightened in sympathy.

"Were you ever there when she woke up?"

"Yeah. Captain Levi told me she never says anything, but that time, when she saw me, she said 'it's not time'. She was taunting me, saying she could escape any time she wanted." he shook his head stubbornly; spoke the next words with a strange hardness. "I don’t get her."

"She's a monster. You don't have to get her."

But even as she said it she thought of hidden lakes, still as mill ponds, where secrets lurked under poisonous green light and anyone who ventured inside could surface a monster.

* * *

It was long dark by the time Levi came back that night. He swept into the room, a whirlwind of energy and annoyance.

Petra sat curled on the bed, like a house pet waiting for its master to return home. She’d had to light a candle since the lamp was out of oil, and now by the single flame on the bedstead she watched Levi loosen his cravat and pull off his boots. He undid a couple of buckles and slid off the rest of the harness all at once, the way he’d thought Petra to do.

“Something wrong?” he said, and Petra had to let go of any illusions she had of being subtle.

“Eren told me the Female Titan was kept here,” she answered, eyes averted less out of polite consideration and more because for the first time she was truly afraid to try reading Levi’s expression.

“And?”

“And I’m wondering why you didn’t?”

“Because,” Levi said, and Petra thought, _at least if he says ‘it’s not your business’, I’ll know where I stand with him now_. “There’s nothing you could do about it.”

And it was back to uncertainty. Levi had always kept them at an arm’s length, everyone in the squad had known it, but it was okay before even then they felt they were closest to him. And it was simple, then, even if Petra had to share him, even if she’d been no more than his subordinate, his blade, his tool, at least she knew she had a place by his side.

She’d thought about devotion once, soon after she’d become part of his team. Everyone in the Corps was there because they’d devoted their lives to humanity’s survival, one way or another. But humanity was such a big, abstract concept, vast and faceless and difficult to imagine when a giant hand was reaching for you. You couldn’t really draw courage out of the thought of humanity. You had to narrow it down to something dear and imaginable, something you could keep close and cover yourself with like a mantle.

For Levi it was a line of dead soldiers, stretching behind in the distance, fueling him with their hope, reminding him what he had to do as the one who stayed alive. For Petra it was Levi. And maybe she was one of those soldiers now, living still yet a sacrifice for their common purpose, and maybe that had all Petra could have hoped for. But she wasn’t sure it was enough for her now.

Levi was standing over her in the bed, regarding her with dispassionate eyes, his lips moving, saying something, and Petra reached out and took his hands, kissed them, pressed them to her face, the way she never could have when she’d still been a part of the Recon Corps. Reverence and the desire for possession competed for dominance in her head, neither of them winning, both driving her to lay fervent, open-mouthed kisses onto his palms until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.  
He twisted away to cup her jaw in his hands instead.

“I don’t know how to be gentle,” he said, and Petra didn’t waste the time to tell him she didn’t care, she just drew him close and kissed him hard.

It was almost chaste at first, a statement of intent, before Levi teased Petra’s lips open and it turned messy and slick and desperately hungry. Her fingers seized the lapels of his shirt almost convulsively, and she tugged him down to the bed with her.

It was nothing like those few meetings with the only boy Petra’s age behind a shed back in the academy, hands stuck down each other’s pants, or the day before she’d gone outside the walls for the first time, hasty and fumbling and brief in the empty dormitory before lunch, with another new recruit that had been dead in a day, or any time she was by herself.

Levi was shameless and he did everything with the easy physicality he showed in battle. He put one hand at the back of Petra’s skull, keeping her in place, and licked into her mouth, drawing deeper and easing back and back again. Petra’s grip pulled open his shirt halfway down his chest, and he sat back to tugged it off over his head, stomach muscles flexing. That done, one of his arm went around her waist, Levi thumbing open the small buttons of her own shirt with the other, kissing over the skin as it was revealed.

Petra clung to his back, his belt loops, clutched his head to her chest. She had not been binding these last few days, and there was nothing to stop Levi from sucking her small nipples into points, letting them slip in and out of his mouth.  
Petra opened his pants, somehow, drawing them down to reveal the curves of his hips, and Levi twisted on his back for a moment to raise his hips of the bed and get them off all the way. He opened Petra’s right after, as if they had to match in their nudity, and slid them off along with her underwear. Levi slipped down the bed, pushed her upper thighs open with his forearms and settled between them. He stared at her, long enough to make her squirm, before his head dipped low and he licked a stripe along the seam of Petra’s cunt. It made her gasp, while Levi cocked his head, licked his lips and moved up her body, like he’d only wanted to see how she tasted, or check how wet she was. Petra didn’t feel startled, couldn’t feel anything but overwhelmed.

When he bit her collarbone, her shoulder, closed one hand around the end of her leg like it was any other part of her, Petra could only curve one arm around his neck and hold on. The other slid down between them to trace the shape of his cock with her fingers. She squeezed, rubbed along velvety skin stretched taut, reached lower to cup his balls. Levi trust into her hand but he was quiet, too quiet. Petra felt like she had to be, too, like words would ruin this, but it was difficult. Especially when Levi moved against her, close, slicking his cock against her cunt.

Petra’s eyelids fluttered shut and she opened them with an effort, wanting to fix every detail of what they were doing in her mind. She wondered whether she’d have to bed, but it was for nothing, because in the net moment Levi splayed one hand on the small of her back, raised her hips off the bed and slid inside. One push, another, and Petra was shuddering happily at the feeling of being filled, Levi’s cock fitting inside her perfectly until he ground to get that last bit in and it was almost too much.

She couldn’t help making noises now, strangled and stunned. Levi rocked into her, a curve of muscle on top of her, the bedsprings creaking, his breath coming out harsh, finally, their bodies coming together with slick, obscene noises. She could push back against him in this position by the strength of her muscles, belly and back.

Petra came long before she was ready, stuttering out a moan and raking her nails on the back of Levi’s hand. He gave a few hard, selfish thrusts afterwards, while Petra pulsed around him, hips twitching with tiny aftershocks. He came inside, long and hard, and Petra was glad.

Afterwards, he pulled the sheet up over them, tucking it around Petra’s back and keeping her close.

“Your father told me he didn’t approve of you marrying me,” Levi said against her hair. Petra had been pleasantly boneless and sleepy, but that woke her right up.  
“He said you’d written him you wanted to devote yourself to me, but he thought you were too young.”

Petra didn’t know what to say.

“It’s not what I meant. I never expected this from you,” she didn’t want Levi to think she’d been trying to get him to marry her all this time.

“I know,” he said calmly. “He was worried. I send you ahead to the hospital, and he must have thought you were dead when he couldn’t find you.”

“Oh. I’m glad you didn’t believe it,” Petra said, but the unease didn’t disappear.

“Where I came from, marriages didn’t count. Money thrown for the judge, when money was tight,” Levi said, lips moving against her temple.

“What counted then?” Petra asked quietly.

“Keeping each other safe. Sharing everything good that came your way.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Petra said, smiling up at him.

“It wasn’t,” Levi said, and got up to get a washcloth.

* * *

Hard knocking woke them up in the middle of the night. Quick as a cat, Levi slid from under the sheets and Petra's arm, somehow located his trousers without a light and flung open the door a second after he'd buttoned them.

Kirstein stood on the other side, looking too anxious to blush when he saw his Captain shirtless, and Petra's no doubt disheveled head poking under the covers.

"What is it?"

"The Titan woke up, Sir. She says she wants to talk to Eren."

"Does she now? Wait here, I'll be right out."

Levi closed the door in Kirstein's face. He wasn't even turned round when Petra said,

"I want to come, too," and instantly worried, that Levi would think she was presuming too much now, that she was getting too greedy. "I just want to see her face. Just once."

"Get dressed," Levi answered, already done with his own clothes and reaching for his harness.

Petra got put on her clothes in record time, her heart pounding in her chest, feeling the air in the room was stabbing through her with every breath.

When she was done, Levi picked her up in what was becoming his customary way, against his hip, and he followed Kirstein wordlessly down the stairs and out of the courtyard, then in the dusk-grey streets beyond. They crossed two streets and turned in an alleyway and come up in front of a dilapidated stone building that looked long abandoned.

Kirstein opened the worm-eaten wooden gate and stood back, and Levi came through. Inside, they were greeted by a very different sight - Survey Corps members in full gear lined the walls and the wide, torch-lined stairway leading to the basement. Eren stepped up from the shadows, his eyes enormous on his pale face.

"Captain, should I?"

"We're coming down," Levi told him shortly, and headed underground at the same brisk pace, Eren and Kirstein following, going down one level, then two, and coming out into a large, empty cellar.

The thing in the middle looked less like a crystal and more like a transparent cocoon. It glistened wetly, covered in wires, as if caught in a spider's web. Behind it, as if under thick glass, a girl turned around to look at them.

Petra almost gasped. It was a blond girl with a hooked nose and large, sleepy eyes. Last time Petra had seen that face it was around a gaping, yawning maw. She froze, she couldn't help it.

"Eren," the girl said, and pressed her arms against the living glass.

Eren opened his mouth to say something, but Levi spoke ahead of him. "Here he is. What do you want to say to him, filth?"

The girl's eyes flickered to him, then fixed on Eren once more with a barely concealed eagerness.

"Let him come closer," she said.

"No. You speak to him like this or not at all," Levi said, and Petra realized she was gripping his shoulder so hard her knuckles had turned white.

The girl kept pointed silence for a minute.

Eren slunk closer to Petra and Levi, and whispered.

"Maybe I should. She's never wanted to talk before."

"That's what worries me," Levi muttered, before saying, much louder. "Jean."

Kirstein stepped up, thrumming like a cord. Levi passed him Petra wordlessly. It meant he thought he might have to fight, and Petra had to push down the sudden, irrational unwillingness to let go.

Eren took a few cautious steps forward, Levi doing the same a little to the side, spaced so that they could draw at any moment. They stopped about two arm's lengths from the cocoon.

"Closer," the Titan said.

"This is as close as he gets. Now stop trying my patience," Levi hissed through his teeth.

The Titan looked straight at Eren, and then something happened, the surface of the crystal shimmering and shifting like water disturbed by a thrown stone. A tendril shot out of the surface, rubbery, malleable, and wrapped around Eren's arm. It pulled him in a fraction of a second before Levi's blade cut through the air where it'd just been. Levi swore and whirled, but Eren was already sinking through the crystal's surface.

Petra could see only a corner of his face, the lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent snarl, but she could see the Titan's face very well. She smiled, and reached up to touch Eren's face with her cheek.

"Don't touch him, you filth," someone shouted, and it echoed around the stone walls. Petra realized it was her.

The girl didn't pay any attention to her at all. She stroked the slope of Eren's cheek, once, and then leaned towards him, filthy Titan mouth opening. She kissed Eren, or bit him, or he bit her, or maybe they kissed each other. Petra's stomach turned, but it was hard to tell what was happening behind the barrier. A thin stream of blood flowed down Eren's cheek, and the girl wound her arms around Eren, held his mouth fast to hers, the both of them frozen like flies in amber.

Levi swore at the Titan again, and so did Kirstein, at Eren. Petra didn't want to let herself think - what if Eren stayed like that forever, what if they couldn't get him out, what if he was aware in there, what if he knew he was trapped and that thing was touching him and he wanted to move away but couldn't.

She was starting to get really worked up, before the crystal's surface shifted and creased once more, and let out Eren before closing up once again. Eren hacked and spluttered on the ground, wet as a newborn. Levi shot a wire and drew him closer, no one daring to come closer to the Titan's shell now. The surface of it was clouding, growing pale like a frosted window or deep ice.

"Let me down," Petra said, and squirmed in Kirstein's arms until he practically dropped her to the ground. She landed with a jolt, and crawled towards Eren. He'd managed to rise up on hands and knees, and was dazedly staring at the Titan's direction. Blood mixed with spit covered his chin, but he didn't seem to notice.

Petra shook his shoulder urgently. "Eren, Eren, are you hurt? What did she do to you?"

Eren turned towards her, blinked, and started looking more like himself. He wiped his chin off with his sleeve.

"I'm okay. She bit her own tongue and make me swallow the blood," he said. His head swiveled towards the murky crystal, as if on well-oiled hinges.

"Why would she do that?" Petra asked, aghast.

"I don't know. It was so strange," he touched his fingers to his lips, and Petra had the strongest urge to get him out of here, to get them all out. She leaned around Eren to look for Levi, and her heart jumped in her throat.

Levi was pressed hard against the wall of the crystal, glaring into it dept with eyes turned to slits. He'd cut through or stepped over most of the wires surrounding it, and the thing listed on one side drunkenly. Without thinking about it, Petra started crawling forward.

The rough-cut stone of the flow scraped against her palm, but she was still quick enough to hear what Levi was saying.

"--you give me some answers and make them good, or I haul you off to the nearest mountain, drag you into the deepest tunnel, and blow it up on my way out. You can rot there for all eternity for all I care."

The Titan's face was barely visible now, but from the little Petra could see she didn't seem scared.

"I could return his mother to him. Tell him that," she said, and she wasn't trying to sound seductive, she wasn't trying to pull a con, she wasn't desperately trying to save her skin. She sounded like she was announcing an irrefutable fact, like the sky being blue and blood - red. "She could have her legs back too. Think about it."

Levi didn't hit the crystal, but his lips pulled back from his teeth, the upper one curling, making him seem inhuman. But the woman on the other side was out of his reach, and in a moment she was frozen once more in her self-appointed prison.

Levi stared at it some more, or maybe stared in space, before looking away in disgust. He saw Petra, and his expression shifted instantly.

"Jean, what did I tell you?! Get her out!"

Kirstein scrambled to collect Petra, and before she knew it he was staggering up the stairs, the last look she'd had of the cellar burning in Petra's mind, Levi and Eren's pale faces, left behind with the earthy smell of an old tomb.

* * *

Kirstein wanted to bring Petra upstairs, but what she wanted was to see Levi and Eren as soon as they returned, so they ended up on the same bench she'd shared with Eren yesterday. Kirstein looked like he didn't want to say, awkward in a different way.

"Did you know her well?" Petra asked him, like they were talking about someone who'd died.

"She saved my life once," he answered, head lowered. "Then she tried to kill me."

"Sounds like you're square," Petra said, and Kirstein looked at her like nothing could convince him he'd gotten a fair bargain in the end. They didn't speak after that.

Corporal Hange turned up with the sunrise, shirt wrinkled and eyes bloodshot like she'd been up all night. Likely she had. She sent Kirstein for a cup of tea, and took his seat net to Petra.

"I have the preliminary results from the experiments on Jaeger's formula," she said cheerfully, rubbing the back of her neck. She stretched her arms until her back popped, looking like she didn't have a care in the world. Petra was sure someone had told her what had happened with the Titan just now.

"Why are you telling me this?" Petra asked. It wasn't her place to know.

"It's not like I'm telling you that much. So I mixed up some of the formula with Eren's blood, and left the test glass in a spot with nice bright light. His blood is usually so lively without the formula, I was almost hoping I'd get to grow my own titan, ha-ha!" Petra ignored the disturbing glee in favor of the even more disturbing information. "Can you guess what happened?"

Petra could see Kirstein exiting the kitchen, walking slowly so as not to spill the tea.

"You know I can't," she said. 

Hange leaned towards her, and said, suddenly all business.

"Nothing whatsoever. Interesting, isn't it?"

She grabbed her tea and dashed off somewhere, leaving Petra to feel like her head would burst open from all the unanswered questions inside.

* * *

In Levi's room, on her belly on the rumpled bed, Petra spread out strips of letter paper scavenged from Levi's desk. She wrote "Jaeger" on one, "lake" on another, "syringe" on a third. The sheets multiplied. "WC" and "MP" were lined up. "Female", "Armored" and "Colossal" made a neat little triangle. There were many others - "chew". It was a good thing Levi didn't write many letters.

Petra wasn't like Commander Erwin, she didn't routinely keep in mind the big picture and all the little players within it and predict how they would all react. But it would be easier to figure out motivations from actions than the other way around.

She picked up a piece randomly. It said "Female". Petra grimaced, but she'd decided on this game and she had to get through with it.

The Female Titan needed Eren willing to cooperate. And if she was working together with the Armored and Colossal ones they needed the same thing. Still, offering to bring his mother back from the death was a risky gamble. No one could believe she could do that, no matter how much they wanted to.

They'd stopped the attack on Trost because Eren had turned out to be able to turn into a Titan. The High Command had assumed that they'd decided Eren was more important than destroying the Walls. Maybe, just maybe the attacks on the Walls were means to an end. Maybe they'd been trying to find a Titan shifter inside the walls from the very beginning. Maybe they'd known there would be a shifter inside all along. A single shifter, and so many humans.

A needle in a haystack.

You didn't sort through the hay blade by blade to find the needle, you took a magnet and the needle came to you.

Petra thought about a shifter, one who knew he was a shifter, one who was trying to blend with humans and never show what he was. Titans went after shifters the same they did after humans, so the shifter would need to stay behind the Walls to survive. He wouldn't be happy if one day other intelligent Titans came along, and destroyed the first Wall. He would be worried, he would want them to go away. Enough to show his hand and try to fight them, perhaps.

The only thing that didn't fit was the five-year gap. Why wait so long, once they were sure the Titan hadn't been in the territory enclosed by Wall Maria.

Petra suppressed the urge to bury her face in the scattered paper pieces and kept following the train of thought.

If they knew there was a Titan inside the Walls, maybe they knew where exactly he lived. If he were in Cina, the Titans would need a reason to get in, a reason that had to be pretty damn solid if they took down Rose as well. There'd be so little land and resources left that anyone who didn't belong would be thrown out. Petra didn't like to be so cynical, but she thought that if Wall Rose fell there wouldn't be even an attempt for evacuation. The Military Police would close the gates and watch the people of Rose clawing at them as they were eaten, and they would do nothing.

If Petra's hypothetical shifter was in Cina, he'd have no choice but to fight then.

A five-year gap, Petra thought. The Female Titan had been in the Military Police. She'd needed these years to secure a spot there.

There were still so many questions. Why would the Titans know there was a shifter behind Cina, but not know who he was? Why were they willing to murder so many people to get to him? It was maddening. Petra was suddenly filled with sympathy for Commander Erwin. Following orders was infinitely easier than trying to figure out what was going on.

She burned every single paper in Levi's unused hearth, and opened the window so that the smoke would clear away.

* * *

Levi shook her away when it was dark again outside, the window open still and Petra's back stiff as a board. He had his cloak on.

"I have to go," he said, before she'd had time to wonder about that. "Mike sent word that one of his people disappeared two days ago."

Petra's brain kicked into gear too slowly.

"And you think they might have been that assassin?"

"Might be. I need to follow through," Levi said. Petra gave in to the temptation to touch him, put her fingers to the side of his throat to fell the strong, even pulse under the skin, glad that Levi had allowed it.

"Does it have to be you? Aren't you supposed to keep an eye on the Female Titan?" she asked, but it was all excuses. She just didn't want Levi to go.

"One of the other soldiers caved in and admitted the deserter promised to come back for her. She might be another shifter, everyone in the squad could be a shifter for all we know. It has to be me," Levi said, for all appearances not disappointed at all, but then shifted on one knee and touched his forehead to Petra's as if it was the most normal thing. "Eren will be here with you while I'm gone."

"I understand," Petra said, thinking that she didn't like it, that she wanted to be able to leave with him. They hadn't even talked properly after last night yet.

Levi gave her a last, dragging nudge with his head before pulling away. He was on his feet and out the room before Petra could regret not kissing him. It didn't matter. There'd be other opportunities.

She closed her eyes, lying on her back, still sleepy. The soft breeze from the afternoon had turned into a stronger wind, playing with Petra's hair, billowing the sheets. It whistled under the roof, the whole building humming as if waiting for something.

She heard the footsteps in the hallway, opened her eyes just in time to see the door swing open. It was Eren, looking ashen, but calm.

"Hey, you all right?" Petra said, hoping he wasn't too rattled by the events from the morning.

"Yeah, of course. I'm just glad Mikasa's on a supply run. She would have made a giant deal out of this," Eren nodded towards the stairs. "You want to get down and have some tea or something?"

He looked fine to Petra, and she was no Mikasa, but she was still unwilling to leave him alone. She nodded agreement.

Half a dozen people clustered around one of the tables in the mess hall, talking. It was half of the night guard on their break. Petra knew them all, of course, but she hadn't been close to any of them. She expected Eren to choose and empty table some distance away, so she was surprised when he headed straight towards them and deposited Petra on an empty seat.

"How about some tea, Norbert?" he asked one of them, sitting across from Petra. Norbert had seniority, and by all means should have told Eren to make his own damn tea and mind his manners, but instead he rose without any argument.

Petra raised an eyebrow at Eren. Perhaps him being a shifter had a greater impact on people's attitude than Petra had realized. It wasn't like him to take advantage of it though.

No one tried to talk to Petra, and even Norbert just handed her a steaming mug wordlessly. She watched him head out outside with a laden tray, then shrugged to herself. It was a cool night, perhaps the soldiers outside could use some heat too.

Eren didn't touch his tea, but he warmed his hands on the mug. Petra drank hers in small, scalding sips.

"I wanted to talk to you," Eren said, after half her cup was gone. Petra had figured that much. She set the tea down to signal she was giving him her undivided attention. "About the Titans."

This wasn't exactly what Petra had had in mind, but she was still willing to listen.

"Go on," she said, folding her arms on top of the table. It was unexpectedly comfortable. She thought she could easily go back to sleep like this.

"I think I know why they eat humans," Eren said, looking utterly serious.

This felt weird, Eren, the conversation, even the soldiers sharing a table with her and Eren. None of them seemed interested in their conversation. Granted, they were at the other end of the table and Eren had been speaking quietly, but still, speculation about the Titans was the one topic most likely to garner interest around here.

"It's because they've forgotten how to turn back."

Petra froze, then forced herself to relax.

"Did the Commander tell you something about Titans? Where they came from?" she asked, not wanting to say something she shouldn't, even if it sounded like Eren knew already.

"No, Annie showed me."

This time there was no relaxing, every single muscle in Petra's body seizing up. Despite that, she still felt sleepy when she should have been on high alert.

"What do you mean, she showed you?" Petra said, alarmed. She reached out to him and gripped his forearm. It was like steel under her fingers, and for the first time Petra realized he was as tightly wound as her.

"With her blood. I tasted her before, but it didn't work because it was the Titan's body."

Petra's head rolled to the side until it was resting on her own arm. One of the soldiers was asleep with his head propped on an elbow. The others had their heads on the table just like Petra. As she looked, the last one awake closed his eyes.

"What did she do to you? What did you do to us?" she asked, frantic. Her eyelids felt so heavy, it was impossible to keep them open.

"I just want to answer your questions. For what it's worth."

Petra's memories were a series of snapshots and bits of sound after that.

 _When I was nine, men in Military Police uniforms killed my mom. Mikasa and I escaped, and eventually my dad found us. He was acting strange. He dragged me away, gave me the key to the cellar, and injected me with something that made me black out, and when I woke up I was nine again._ Eren said.

Eren's eyes glinting strangely in the firelight, almost luminous.

_The second time it was the Military Police too, but Mikasa and I didn't see my father ever again. We hid and ran and stole food to survive until we turned old enough to sign up. We joined the Survey Corps, and three years after that Mikasa died. I remember I was surprised her blood was the same color as everyone else's, and not much else before I woke up, nine again._

Petra wondering how Eren had made Norbert drug the tea, why she hadn't noticed the taste, the smell. It's everywhere now.

_The third time Annie and the others showed up. They'd felt me, they knew I had travelled on that day. I haven't forgiven them, and I won't until it's over and everyone is alive. I promise. But there's no other way._

Eren's gear hitting the table with a clang. He didn't need it any more.

_I used to think my dad turned me into a Titan with whatever it was in that syringe, but I was wrong, I was already a Titan when he found me. It's useful in so many ways - protection, healing, exchanging memory. It would have all been wasted if my father hadn't made me travel that first time. After you've done it once, you don't need any injections to push you._

Unhurried footsteps coming closer down the corridor, not trying to hide.

_I'm the only one who has the coordinate. The others are about a thousand years after my time. The strain had degenerated a lot by then. I've been trying, but it's hard. I can't remember where I need to go, and I keep returning to the day my mom died. I need to go before that, before they were any Titans at all. I'll figure it out. I have time._

"Are you finished here?" A girl, shorter than Eren, still in uniform. Petra loathes her, can't remember the reason.

"Let's go pick them up," Eren's back, Eren walking away.

_You won't even wake up. The world will disappear while you sleep, and another you will wake up in the past._

Tears of frustration gathered on the tips of Petra's lowered eyelashes. Wishing she'd known, so she could have said goodbye to Levi properly. Wishing she could remember him even more.

_I wish I could remember which time this one was._

* * *

Petra blinked in the bright sun, casting jerky shadows in the dusty drill-ground and shining off the instructor's bald head. He'd been talking so long, it was so hot, and Petra was so near the back that the constant drone had nearly put her to sleep. Her legs had gone asleep, actually, and for a short time she couldn't feel anything below the middle of her thighs.

The instructor moved back into the thick shadow of one of the buildings to talk to the Survey Corps members who'd come to try and convince the cadets to join their branch, and Petra used the opportunity to rub at her thighs. It was bliss, almost as good as an enormous glass of cool well water would have been. She leaned forward, digging the balls of her hands right over her kneecaps, and nearly moaned.

The girl beside her nudged her with the tip of her boot, and Petra sprung at attention, startled. There were limits to how much you could slack in order, even if you were at the back after all. It was only just that she'd already decided she wanted to go to the Survey Corps, and so listening attentively now was not only useless but something to avoid, in case it made her get cold feet in the last moment.

Her eyes feel on the Survey corps man. Short and mean-looking, with an expression that seemed to say "I don't care if any of you punks join or not, got it". Yet for some reason Petra couldn't help smiling at the sight of him. Maybe it was because hers was the only grinning face of the bunch, maybe because her unusual hair had caught his eye, but for whatever reason the man's gaze seemed to lock on Petra's for an instant.

It might have been a small thing, but in that moment it felt like she'd earned the right to look that man in the eye, paid dearly for it, a privilege and a right that had been so carefully arranged and worked for that it approached an artwork, a construction. 

Something like destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm aware the science here is the kind that wouldn't be out of place in a 50s horror movie. I hope it jibes well with canon.
> 
> The mix of kerosene, lard and vinegar was actually used to get rid of lice, but no one bathed in it; people just smeared it on their heads. No idea how effective it was though.


End file.
